CIBRAgi 


fllSB  C1BR5R2 


QUESTION  OF 


An  Essay  in  New  Orthodoxy. 


BY  A  PURITAN, 
t! 


\a\si,  ok  Xoyia 


WILSON    &    COMPANY. 

NEW  YORK  :    AMERICAN  NEWS  COMPANY. 

1873, 


*.** 

-v 


HH3 


Entered  according  to  Act  of  Congress,  in  the  year  1873,  by 
Wilson  &  Co. ,  in  the  Office  of  the  Librarian  of  Congress  at 
Washington. 


Press  of  DKNISOS,  GRENBLL  &  BARKER, 
New  Haven,  Conn. 


UCS0 


ERRATA. 

p.  27,  line  3  ;  for  "to  that,"  read  "that  to." 

p.  74,  line  3  ;  for  "AN"  read  "ON." 

p.  76,  fifth  line  from  bottom,  for  "where"  read  "whence."' 

p.  81,  line  2  ;  for  "to  God"  read  "of  God." 

p.  85,  line  6  ;  for  "lasting"  read  "hasting." 

p.  89,  line  8;  for  "sight"  read  "sigh." 

p.  101,  lines  1  and  2,  belong  as  lines  2  and 8  on  the  next  page 

p.  102,  last  line  ;  for  "annointed"  read  ''anointed." 


;HO 


P  R  E  F  ACE 


THE  essay  here  published  is  intended  to  break  ground  in 
tiifc  direction  of  that  new  providential  interpretation  of 
Christianity  which  is  evidently,  and  with  power  and  author- 
ity, breaking  forth  from  Christian  thought  and  learning  and 
experience,  in  our  age  of  emancipated  and  enlightened  in- 
quiry. The  pages  which  follow  assume  the  certainty  of 
these  three  facts. — (I)  that  Christian  confession,  in  its  most 
unquestioned  and  thorough  types,  is  in  our  day  undergoing 
profound  regeneration,  through  the  operation  evidently  of 
that  inward  spirit  and  truth  of  holiness  and  love  which  offer 
the  most  indisputable  mark  of  genuine  Gospel  faith ;  (2)  that, 
through  this  regeneration,  accredited  external  orthodoxy — 
what  is  called  simply  "  orthodoxy"  in  the  following  pages — 
is  giving  way  to  a  new,  a  more  profound,  and  a  far  more  cor- 
rect orthodoxy  ;  and  (3)  that  one  of  the  ripest  and  most  evi- 
dent fruits  of  this  change  is  the  hope,  the  belief,  the  courage 
to  implicitly  and  joyfully  trust,  that  the  family  of  God's  moral 
and  spiritual  creation  is  absolutely  one  through  God  in 
Christ  reconciling  the  world  unto  himself,  and  that  heavenly 
growth  to  holiness  and  blessedness,  according  to  a  christen- 


PREFACE. 

ing  aud  redeeming  power  of  God  working  in  us,  is  assured 
beyond  all  question,  not  alone  to  such  as  spiritual  help 
reaches  effectually  in  the  present  initial  life,  but  to  those  also 
who  fall  into  the  abyss  of  God's  future  inexorable  punish- 
ment of  sin,  or  who  through  ignorance  are  all  their  life  here 
alienated  from  wisdom  and  holiness. 

That  the  Divine  Kingdom  over  all  souls,  revealed  in 
Christ,  is  one  of  discipline  fully  adequate  to  bring  every 
creature  to  the  stature  of  a  perfect  man,  its  tremendous  se- 
verities no  less  than  its  evident  mercies  designed  in  sure  wis- 
dpm  and  perfect  love,  and  the  Creator's  gift,  in  the  very  na- 
ture ot  the  creature  under  Divine  Fatherhood,  a  boon  of 
eternal  life  without  exception  or  repentance,  is  the  solemn, 
joyful  conviction  with  which  the  discussion  of  this  little  vol- 
ume has  been  undertaken.  The  CHRISTENING  FATHERHOOD 
of  God,  with  its  illustration  and  sacramental  symbol  in  the 
CHRISTENED  HUMANITY  of  Jesus,  to  the  imitation  of  which, 
and  heirship  of  God  with  which,  we  are  called,  would  seem 
to  be  upon  close  discrimination,  the  very  truth  of  Christ  for 
immediate  practical  use,  until  we  all  come  in  the  unity  of  the 
faith,  and  of  the  knowledge  of  the  Son  of  God,  unto  a  per- 
fect man,  unto  the  measure  of  the  stature  of  the  fulness  of 
Christ. 

That  this  truth  has  been  no  more  distinctly  and  profoundly 
lield,  and  has  only  now  begun  to  take  the  form  of  loyalty  to 
God  and  love  to  man  for  the  redemption  unto  holiness  and 
heaven  of  every  creature,  may  be  ascribed  to  this  cause — the 
fact  that  Disciples'  Christianity  has  always  proceeded  upon  a 
-wrong  principle,  suggested  by  the  natural  and  Judaic  rather 


PREFACE. 

than  the  regenerate  and  Christian  mind,  and  has  never  to 
any  great  historical  purpose  correctly  represented  the  gen- 
uine spiritual  method  of  original  Christian  teaching.  Jesus 
told  his  own  chosen  that  they  must  change  entirely  in  order 
to  enter  the  kingdom  in  very  truth.  That  he  cannot  have 
referred  to  the  conditions  of  provisional  discipleship  and  per- 
sonal salvation,  is  plain  upon  the  face  of  the  matter.  He 
must  have  referred  to  the  change  from  very  imperfect  pro- 
visional discipleship,  to  that  complete  imitation  of  himself 
and  thorough  discipleship  which  should  make  them  with 
him  fully  sons  of  God  and  heirs  of  the  Divine  Kingdom. 
Now  this  change  was  never  made,  at  least  not  in  any  thor- 
ough external  way,  and  in  consequence  Judaic  and  natural 
self-assertion  and  opinion  have  thus  far  ruled  the  external 
course  ol  Christian  history,  and  instead  of  spiritual  conform- 
ity to  Christ,  and  faith  rooted  and  grounded  in  the  love 
which  he  pronounced  the  true  test  of  real  discipleship,  there 
has  prevailed  a  dogma  about  Jesus,  with  related  dogmas  and 
practices,  too  often  flagrantly  false  to  the  divine  law  of  love. 
Jesus  felt  constrained  to  say  to  an  ardent  burst  of  dogmatic 
devotion  in  Peter,  "Get  thee  behind  me,  Satan."  It  was 
because  the  Christ  which  Peter  took  him  to  be  was-  a  thor- 
oughly false  Christ,  inasmuch  as  it  savored  of  setting  up  Je- 
sus in  a  way  not  consistent  with  true  sacrifice  to  God.  Yet 
to  this  day  imitation  of  Peter's  zeal  in  opinion  of  Jesus  has 
greatly  outrun  imitation  of  Christ's  pure  sacrifice,  and  for  the 
Gospel  ideal  of  holiness  and  love,  reflected  in  the  obedience 
of  Jesus,  we  have  gospellers' ideas  ol  dogma  and  ordinance. 
A  discipleship  faithfully  attempting  to  obey  the  repeated  and 


PKKFACK. 

imperative  cautions  and  rebukes  aaddrcssed  te  the  first  disci- 
ples, to  save  them  from  doing  as  the  heathen  did  and  from 
following  false  traditions  of  Judaism,  was  not  attempted  by 
primitive  Christianity  apart  from  Paul's  single  struggle  against 
the  older  and  more  immediate  apostles,  and  Paul  barely 
fought  down  for  himself  the  ban  of  Petrine  orthodoxy,  and 
left  no  successor  to  his  great  task. 

But  what  no  Father,  no  Reformer,  no  Doctor  of  the 
Church,  had  so  much  as  attempted,  universal  Christian  learn- 
ing and  life  have  groped  towards  always,  and  have  uncon- 
sciously reached  to  no  small  degree  within  recent  years,  until 
it  seems  only  necessary  for  some  clear  providential  word  to 
be  spoken  to  inaugurate  a  reform  exceeding  in  significance 
everything  humanly  undertaken  on  behalf  of  Christianity 
since  Paul  rested  from  his  labors.  Such  a  reform  would  re- 
cur to  the  Christian  discernment  which  characterized  Paul, 
to  divide,  in  prophetic  record,  evangelic  report,  and  apostolic 
teaching,  between  the  very  truth  of  Christ  and  the  intruding 
leaven  of  Petrine  opinion,  and  to  make  definite  and  thorough 
and  conclusive  that  evolution  of  the  spirit  of  holiness  and  love 
which  has  become  the  prevailing  highest  mood  of  Christen 
dom. 

It  is  in  the  hope  that  providence  and  inspiration  are  indeed 
bringing  about  this  comprehensive  reconsideration  of  Chris- 
tian method  and  matter,  and  are  preparing  thereby  a  new 
birth  of  historical  Christianity,  a  regeneration  equal  to  bring- 
ing home  our  faith  to  awakened  mankind,  that  the  present, 
and  some  other  essays  have  been  prepared,  as  studies  in  new 
orthodoxy.  The  penman  has  endeavored  to  recur  to  the  gen- 


PKEKACK. 

uine  method  of  our  faith,  that  of  partial  and  provisional 
dependence  only  on  text  and  record,  and  of  a  considerable 
looking  unto  the  unwritten  oracles  of  christened  conscience 
and  reason,  the  lights  of  that  eternal  Word  which  abundantly 
aids  patient  search  guided  by  fervent  loyalty  to  God  and 
love  to  man.  And  after  the  manner  of  this  dependence  on 
providence  and  spirit,  he  has  ventured  an  appeal  of  strong 
confidence  to  the  name  and  authority  of  inspiration,  as  he 
discerns  it  in  the  pure  thoughts  now  deeply  moving  the  Chris- 
tian mind,  and,  as  of  the  very  truth  of  God  in  Christ,  has  pro- 
posed to  move  the  previous  question  of  the  Christian  Religion 
— Holiness  and  Love — upon  the  dogmatic  orthodoxies  of  sect 
and  creed  and  church,  which  have  been  created  after  the 
opinions  of  men,  and  not  after  God  in  righteousness  and  true 
holiness.  The  essay  now  published  opens  a  discussion  which 
will  be  continued  in  other  essays,  more  specifically  devoted 
to  interpreting  the  essential  truth  of  Christ  according  to  the 
writer's  conception  of  new,  or  regenerate  and  true  ortho- 
doxy. 
New  Haven,  Sept.  1st,  1873. 


THE 


QUESTION  OF  HELL. 


ORTHODOX    PERPLEXITY. 

There  is  in  our  day  no  more  significant  theologi- 
cal spectacle  than  that  of  the  orthodox  world  with 
the  dogma  of  eternal  punishment  in  its  hands. 
How  not  to  hold  it  and  how  not  to  drop  it,  is  the 
problem  which  drives  believers  and  preachers  into 
all  sorts  of  experimental  speculations.  It  seems  as 
if  evangelical  faith  must  break,  or  at  least  ease, 
the  yoke  of  strict  orthodox  dogma,  or  perish  in  the 
attempt. 

THE    MISCHIEFS    OF    UNCERTAIN    TEACHING. 

The  plan  of  neither  holding  nor  dropping  a  dog- 
ma so  conspicuous  and  significant  as  that  of  the 
eternal  perdition  of  sinners,  palsies  faith  and  mor- 
ality to  a  perilous  degree,  neither  that  nor  any 
other  definite  view  of  retribution  being  distinctly 
preached  to  doubting  and  tempted  men.  A  com- 


12  THE  QUESTION  OF  HELL. 

prehensive  indecision  marks  the  popular  pulpit,  and 
to  avoid  speaking  decisively  on  great  topics  of 
sound  divinity,  preachers  resort  to  the  small  themes 
of  the  passing  earthly  spectacle,  and  we  hear  the 
catchwords  of  public  gossip  instead  of  the  terms  of 
gospel  truth.  The  name  of  some  Jim  or  Jack  of 
rascality,  made  notorious  by  a  violent  death,  runs 
the  round  of  the  pulpits  of  the  land,  with  an  inter- 
est keener  a  great  deal  than  commonly  attaches  to 
the  name  of  Jesus.  Not  that  dogmatic  views  of 
Jesus  are  not  abundant,  nor  that  everybody  would 
not  be  greatly  shocked  at  the  mere  thought  of  any- 
thing conflicting  with  those  views,  but  simply 
this,  that  certain  grand  aspects  of  that  name,  suciv 
as  that  of  redemption  from  eternal  misery  through 
it  alone,  are  become  so  perplexing,  if  not  so  doubt- 
ful, to  average  belief,  in  and  out  ot  the  pulpit,  that 
very  few  people  want,  and  very  few  preachers  can 
give,  any  distinct,  decisive  message  on  such  points, 
and  all  are  content  to  postpone  judgment  to  come, 
and  find  a  theme  of  Sunday  interest  in  the  last 
topic  of  the  day.  It  may  be  taken  for  certain  that 
an  overwhelming  overthrow  of  dogma,  by  the  in- 
road of  positive  heresy,  would  be  far  better  than 
this  terribly  shaken  and  doubtful  state  of  the  be- 
lieving mind,  and  that  any  energetic  attempt  to 
take  some  ground,  clearly  and  vigorously,  with 
definition  and  argument,  should  be  heartily  wel- 
comed. 


THE  QUESTION  OF  HELL.  13 

AN    UNORTHODOX    HELL. 

In  this  view  of  the  case,  an  unusual  interest  may 
well  attach  to  a  treatise  on  The  Duration  and  Na- 
ture of  Future  Punishment,  (by  Henry  Constable, 
M.  A.  Prebendary  of  Cork),  which  Prof.  C.  L.  Ives, 
M.  D.,  of  Yale  College,  has  introduced  to  Ameri- 
can readers,  in  a  pamphlet  published  not  long 
since  at  New  Haven  ;  especially  as  Prof.  Ives  very 
distinctly  and  forcibly  avows  his  own  conversion 
to  the  theory  of  Mr.  Constable,  and  makes,  in  a 
brief  introduction,  a  noteworthy  confession  and 
plea,  to  the  most  serious  prejudice  of  the  current 
orthodox  dogma.  As  a  means  of  getting  a  firm 
and  intimate  hold  of  the  subject,  the  more  signifi- 
cant statements  of  these  two  witnesses  are  of  great 
value.  Both  continue  to  adhere  with  the  most 
pious  sincerity  to  the  absolute  authority  of  Scrip- 
ture, and  both  assert  a  thorough  dogma  of  eternal 
perdition,  at  the  same  time  that  they  destroy  root 
and  branch,  in  their  own  earnest  and  carefully  rea- 
soned conviction,  the  old  orthodox  idea  of  what 
perdition  is,  and  do  this  with  an  incidental  expos- 
ure of  the  interior  of  orthodoxy,  which  is  alone 
worthy  of  the  most  thoughtful,  not  to  say  anxious, 
attention.  If  any  considerable  proportion  of  or- 
thodox believers  are  still  strict  in  belief  on  no  bet- 
ter ground  than  that  which  Mr.  Constable  and 
Prof.  Ives  appear  to  have  stood  upon,  we  may  well 


14  THE  QUESTION  OF  HELL. 

expect  some  great  catastrophe  to  the  dogma  called 
orthodox,  either  a  downfall  of  orthodoxy,  or  a  total 
change  of  front,  which  shall  give  it  the  aspect  of  a 
new  departure,  more  significant  than  any  which 
has  taken  place  since  Paul  turned  the  infant 
church  out  of  its  Judaic  nest,  adrift  over  the  wide 
uncertainties  of  a  world  of  heathenism. 

AN    ORTHODOX    WITNESS    AGAINST     ETERNAL    HELL. 

The  confession  and  plea  of  the  New  Haven  Pro- 
fessor, which  serves  as  a  preface  to  Mr.  Con- 
table's  treatise,  in  the  publication  to  which  we 
have  referred,  deserves,  and  will  repay,  distinct 
consideration.  Professor  Ives,  though  evidently 
grounded  to  the  fullest  measure  of  piety  in  dog- 
matic orthodoxy,  and  an  able  and  scholarly  inquir- 
er, is,  as  a  professor  of  medicine  for  the  body 
rather  than  the  soul,  a  layman  in  divinity,  and  on 
this  account  somewhat  more  frank  and  energetic, 
as  a  convert,  than  an  occupant  of  a  pulpit  would 
have  been.  At  any  rate  he  says  things  which  are 
very  much  to  the  point  of  thorough  and  candid  dis- 
cussion. To  begin  with,  he  remarks  upon  his  own 
state  of  mind,  while  yet  professing  an  orthodox 
faith,  in  the  following  terms  : 

"  Taught  from  childhood,  as  doubtless  you  also  have  been, 
that  all  souls  are  possessed  of  immortality,  and  that,  for  the 
wicked  ones,  hell  is  a  place  of  eternal  torment,  I  ever  accepted 
the  belief,  and  for  years  have  earnestly  enforced  it  upon  others. 
But1  during  a  recent  journey  in  Europe,  my  faith  in  that  doc- 


THE  QUESTION  01  HELL.  15 

trine  was  staggered  by  the  sight  of  the  multitudes  there  and 
at  the  thought  of  the  outlying  millions  still  of  Asia  and 
Africa,  all  hurrying  on  to  God's  tribunal.  Can  it  be,  that  in 
their  hcedlessness  and  ignorance,  or  in  their  delusive  strivings 
after  pardon,  they  are  to  meet  a  doom  such  as,  in  its  infinity 
of  torture,  the  human  mind  could  neither  conceive  nor'en- 
dure  the  thought  of  ?  I  had  learned  to  know  somewhat  of  the 
love  of  God,  the  Creator  and  upholder  of  these  lost  millions ; 
how  could  I  reconcile  that  with  the  accepted  doctrine  of 
unending  suffering?  I  did  try,  faithfully  ;  even,  in  these 
struggles  of  the  mind,  writing  home  to  a  'doubting  Christian 
brother  to  confirm  him  in  this  belief,  which  1  feared  was 
slipping  from  under  me." 

EDUCATION     CHIEFLY     OCCASIONS     THE    ORTHODOX 
FAITH    IN    HELL. 

It  appears  from  this  statement,  that  Dr.  Ives  is 
now  conscious  that  education  has  been  the  chief 
occasion  of  his  belief,  although  that  belief  has  gone 
to  the  extent  of  earnest  effort  to  persuade  others. 
This  doubtless  is  the  average  ground  of  a  similar 
belief.  Our  orthodox  Christians  accept,  insist  on, 
and  vigorously  contend  for,  extreme  dogmas,  chiefly 
because  they  have  been  taught  to  do  so,  and  find 
that  it  is  the  rule  to  do  so.  And  by  consequence, 
if  ever  a  large  view  of  the  facts  of  the  case  is 
brought  home  to  their  minds  their  belief  can  hardly 
fail,  having  'a  chiefly  traditional  foundation,  to 
experience  a  shock. 

DANGER  OF    REALLY  THINKING  WHAT  HELL  MEANS. 

Dr.  Ives  was  staggered  when  he  came  to  really 
think  about  it  for  himself.  That  he  had  not  be- 


16  THE  QUESTION  OF  HELL. 

fore  thought  about  it  seems  the  sole  explanation 
of  his  previous  unshaken  confidence  that  the  dogma 
of  eternal  perdition  is  indeed  true.  A  similar  fail- 
ure to  really  think  about  it,  to  comprehend  even  a 
little  the  whole  case,  is  doubtless  the  explanation 
of  ordinary  assent  to  a  dogma  so  fearful  to  real 
thought  as  that  which  passes  current  under  the 
name  of  eternal  punishment.  It  may  be  taken 
almost  for  granted  that  no  mind  fully  alive  to 
moral  realities  ever  gave  a  full  assent  to  this 
dogma.  Either  men  suppose  themselves  doing 
this,  while  in  fact  hopes,  or  at  least  thoughts,  of 
mercy,  are  holding  them  back  from  full  assent,  or 
they  give  a  thorough  assent  because  they  are  radi- 
cally selfish  and  bad,  and  they  think  to  buy  their 
own  security  by  heartily  consenting  to  promiscuous 
perdition. 

FAITH 'IN  HELL  UNNATURAL    TO  A  CHRISTIAN  MIND. 

To  be  rooted  and  grounded  in  the  thought  of 
damnation  for  others,  in  the  same  way  that  a  soul 
may  be  rooted  and  grounded  in  love,  is  not  possi- 
ble to  a  Christian,  if  indeed  it  be  to  anything  but 
a  devil.  This  being  the  case,  it  is  plain  that  Dr. 
Ives  is  now  a  witness  against  his  former  self,  to  the 
effect  that,  without  thinking,  and  from  the  eftect 
of  education,  he  held,  in  Christ's  name,  a  doctrine 
worthy  of  the  mind  of  a  devil.  And  this  we  shall 


THE  QUESTION  OF  HELL.  IT 

find  both  Dr.  Ives  and  Mr.  Constable  admitting  to 
have  been  the  case. 

INFINITE    TORTURE    OF    SOULS    INCREDIBLE. 

The  great  question  which  rose  out  of  Dr.  Ives' 
consciousness  of  the  divine  love, -like  an  island 
upheaved  from  the  depths  of  the  sea,  never  to  sink 
from  view  again,  is  a  question  which  no  thoroughly 
awakened  mind  can  escape — Is  infinite  torture  of 
souls  possible  to  GOD  ?  The  common  disposition 
of  this  question  is  a  verdict  of  not  proven.  Most 
good  persons,  who  think  upon  the  subject,  quietly 
record  this  verdict,  as  one  would  slyly  draw  back  a 
bolt,  and  there  leave  the  matter.  They  do  not 
permit  themselves  to  go  a  single  step  further,  or 
even  to  admit  that  they  cherish  a  hope  for  the 
wicked.  They  innocently  disguise,  even  to  them- 
selves, much  more  in  argument  with  others,  their 
real  hope  and  trust,  by  earnestly  considering  and 
urging  the  reasons  why  we  should  act  as  if  the 
peril  of  hell  were  beyond  all  doubt.  In  experiences 
which  make  them  take  definite  ground,  and  compel 
them  to  show  where  they  stand,  they  let  their  hope 
appear,  or  even  their  distinct  and  firm  confidence, 
at  the  same  time  that  they  avoid  any  very  open  or 
thorough  denial  of  the  real  dead  dogma,  and  do 
not  venture  to  profess  any  very  decisive  faith  that 
Grod  rules  to  redeem.  Thus  a  doctrine  of  hell, 
which  is  of  lidl  in  every  sense,  gets  borne  on  upon 


1 8  THE  Q  UES  TION  OF  HEL  L, 

the  current  of  general  faith,  though  no  more  a  part 
of  that  faith  than  a  dead  log  is  of  the  living  stream 
on  which  it  rides  to  the  sea.  When  education, 
therefore,  shall  cease  to  insist  on  this  dogma,  the 
average  Christian  mind  will  be  emancipated  from 
it,  and  faith  in  redemption,  which  is  now  whis- 
pered in  the  ear,  will  be  the  open  confession  of  all. 

DOGMATIC    TEMPTATION    TO   DISHONESTY. 

Dr.  Ives  tells  us  that  at  the  very  time  that  his 
faith  was  staggered  by  thoughts  which  he  could 
not  suppress,  he  tried  to  act  as  if  no  such  doubt 
troubled  his  own  mind.  He  even  avows  that  he 
urged  a  doubting  brother  not  to  doubt,  at  the  very 
moment  that  he  was  himself  doubting.  Such  re- 
sult of  a  perplexed  faith  must  not  surprise  us, 
much  less  lead  us  to  harsh  judgment.  It  is  as 
honest  in  the  motive  as  it  is  otherwise  in  the  act, 
and  we  must  understand  rather  than  rebuke.  But 
if  the  very  worst  trick  of  mind  is  not  to  be  accepted 
as  a  means  of  grace,  we  must  energetically  put 
away  all  such  untruth  of  profession  and  plea  ;  ear- 
nestly follow  light  as  providence  and  spirit  bring  it 
to  our  minds,  and  avoid  false  confession  as  a  device 
of  the  father  of  lies. 

DOGMATIC    UNVERACITY. 

Dr.  Ives  did  perhaps  own  to  his  doubting  brother 
that  he  also  was  in  doubt,  and  did  not  profess,  or 


THE  QUESTION  Of  HELL.  19 

imply,  a  confidence  greater  than  he  really  had.  If 
this  was  not  the  case,  however  ;  if  Dr.  Ives,  with 
hisjown  mind  shaken,  urged  unshaken  conviction, 
his  act  was  not  one  whit  more  moral  intrinsically 
than  any  other  false  sacrifice  to  God,  but  was  as 
thoroughly  heathen  and  superstitious  as  if  it  had 
been  done  on  the  banks  of  the  Ganges,  by  the  most 
ignorant  of  idolaters.  We  are  not  bound  to  con- 
fession, much  less  to  argument,  of  our  heart's 
faith  ;  but  to  attempt  either,  except  in  truth  and 
sincerity,  and  especially  to  attempt  argument  to 
which  our  own  confession  would  give  the  lie,  is 
neither  praise  to  God,  nor  benefit  to 'man,  but  one 
of  the  greatest  delusions  and  mischiefs  possible. 

CHRISTIANITY    DEMANDS    TRUTH    OF    CONVICTION. 

The  habit  of  falsifying  real  convictions  in  a  sup- 
posed duty  of  standing  up  for  beliefs  which  are 
slipping  away  from  us,  is  doubtless  exceedingly 
common.  We  at  least  have  met  it  frequently  in 
our  intimate  experience  of  the  orthodox  religious 
world.  And  it  is  our  deep  conviction  that  nothing 
so  much  as  this  deserves  to  be  considered  against 
the  rule  of  Christian  faith.  That  faith  places 
every  soul  under  the  providence  and  spirit  of  God, 
for  every  motion  of  the  mind,  as  well  as  every  act 
of  life.  Careful,  therefore,,  as  we  may  be  not  to 
boldly  assume  the  finger  of  God  in  our  experience, 


20  THE  QUESTION  OF  HELL. 

we  are  bound  to  trust  the  divine  leading  of  our 
most  earnest  efforts  to  have  truth  of  thought  and 
hope  and  trust  and  purpose  in  the  inner  man  ;  and 
when  such  efforts  bring  us  to  profound  question- 
ings ;  when  they  drive  the  ploughshare  of  doubt 
through  old  faith,  to  open  deeper  ground  of  new 
faith  ;  we  are  bound  to  study  honesty  as  well  as 
humility,  and  to  no  more  think  of  telling,  by  word 
or  act,  what  is  not  true,  to  a  doubting  brother, 
than  we  would  tell  a  lie  to  the  Holy  Ghost. 

THE    CRIME    AGAINST    CHRIST. 

The  Christian  communion  of  our  day  sadly  needs 
open  and  free  confession  among  its  members. 
Those  of  our  dogmatists  who  treat  such  confession 
as  a  crime,  are  sinning  with  a  high  hand  against 
the  pure  doctrine  of  Christ.  They  are  Jesuits  as 
much  worse  than  the  Catholic  ever  were  as  the 
new  inquiry  of  our  day  is  deeper  than  that  which 
sprang  up  on  Catholic  ground.  If  it  please  God 
to  decimate,  once  and  again,  our  orthodox  doctors 
of  divinity,*  with  a  plague  of  sudden  summons  from 
this  scene  of  struggling  faith,  and  pour  upon  them 

*  Such  persons  will  find  the  story  of  Ananias  and  Sapphira 
a  much  needed  lesson,  if  they  will,  in  a  truthful  figure,  take 
the  former  to  represent  Catholic  Ecclesiasticism,  and  the  lat- 
ter Protestant  dogmatism.  The  feet  of  the  young  men  who 
carried  out  the  former,  dead  by  the  hand  of  God,  about  the 
space  of  three  historical  hours  ago,  are  at  the  door,  and  shall 
carry  thee  out,  thou  mother  of  lies,  Protestant  Dogmatism  ! 


THE  QUESTION  OF  HELL.  21 

that  remain  a  spirit  of  honest  opening  of  their 
hearts,  that  in  the  fear  of  God  we  may  all  reason 
together  of  the  things  that  concern  our  peace,  it 
will  be  more  to  the  purpose  of  the  coming  of  the 
kingdom  of  God  on  earth  than  anything  which  has 
occurred  since  Jesus  said  plainly  to  a  chief  apostle, 
Get  thee  behind  me,  Satan. 

L1TEKAL    DEATH    IN    HELL. 

Dr.  Ives  found  in  Mr.  Constable's  treatise  on 
Future  Punishment  the  doctrine  that  eternal  death 
is  literally  death,  the  extinction,  through  the 
plague  of  sin  and  the  pains  of  hell,  of  the  sinful 
soul  ;  and  this  he  accepted  as  a  substitute  for  the 
orthodox  dogma  of  eternal  torment. 

ETERNAL  EXTINCTION  PUT  FOR  ETERNAL  HELL. 

The  spirit  and  method  of  his  conversion  to  this 
doctrine  of  eternal  extinction  of  the  wicked,  he 
indicates  in  these  sentences  : 

lt  This  view  of  the  future,  professedly  derived  from  the 
word  of  God,  I  carefully  and  prayerfully  compared  with  the 
Scripture  record.  And  there,  as  I  believe,  I  found  it ;  and  so 
plainly  set  forth,  I  could  but  wonder  that  I  had  so  long  over 
looked  it.  I  had  been  blinded,  as  I  believe  we  all  are,  by  the 
idea  that  immortality  must  be  a  necessary  attribute  of  every 
soul,  and  so  the  truth  had  heretofore  lain  concealed.  But 
with  the  sweeping  away  of  that  error,  a  clearer  light  is  shed 
upon  the  Holy  Word  itself,  which  I  can  now  understand  as  it 
was  written,  not  as  it  is  explained  for  me  by  commentators. 

"Rejecting  the  traditional  dogma  of  the  soul's  essential 
immortality,  denied,  it  would  seem,  if  anything  can  be,  in  the 
Bible,  our  doubts  and  difficulties  vanish  with  it.  The  justice 


22  THE  QUESTION  OF  HELL. 

of  God,  and  the  question  of  the  origin  and  end  of  evil,  no 
longer  now  need  the  unsatisfactory  explanation  of  theologic 
essayists. 

"The  popular  theory  that  'every  soul  is  immortal,'  is  the 
original  lie  of  our  sinful  world.  It  was  first  uttered  in  Eden 
when  Satan  declared  to  our  tempted  parents — 'Ye  shall  not 
surely  die '  ;  in  the  same  words  it  is  repeated  by  the  Univer- 
salist  of  our  day  ;  and  it  is  repeated  still,  though  it  be  unwit- 
tingly and  in  other  words,  by  every  orthodox  religious 
teacher,  when  he  proclaims — 'Ye  shall  live  forever  in  your 
sins,'  .  .  The  arch-deceiver  has  for  centuries  persuaded  the 
Christian  Church  that  his  lie  was  not  far  from  the  truth.  .  . 
Sad  that  our  Protestant  forefathers,  when  they  took  their 
stand  upon  the  Bible,  and  rejected  the  many  errors  of  a  cor- 
rupted Church,  had  not  also  recognized  and  rejected  this 
early  device  of  the  Old  Serpent. " 

ORTHODOX    SOPHISTRY    CONTEMNED. 

Here  again  we  see  that  the  old  view,  though 
firmly  held  as  Bible  doctrine,  was  beset  with  doubts 
and  difficulties,  and  that  to  meet  these  Dr.  Ives  had 
found  only  "  the  unsatisfactory  explanation  of  the- 
ological essayists."  It  is  a  sweeping  sentence  of 
contempt  against  the  masters  of  New  England 
divinity,  to  brush  them  aside  in  this  way,  as  theo- 
logical essayists  ;  but  Dr.  Ives  is  evidently  sure  of 
his  ground,  though  it  be  in  high  disrespect  to  Tay- 
lor and  Dwight,  who  were  masters  in  New  Haven, 
and  to  still  greater  names,  with  whom  has  rested 
the  credit  of  having  placed  the  orthodox  system 
upon  a  foundation  of  impregnable  reasoning.  Prof. 
Park  said  in  the  great  Boston  Council  of  Congre- 
gationalists  a  few  years  since,  that  an  educated 
^  who  was  not  a  Calvinist,  was  not  a  respecta- 


THE  Q  UESTION  OF  HELL.  23 

ble  man  ;  and  this  rough  witticism  Dr.  Taylor,  the 
New  Haven  dogmatist  of  some  years  since,  who 
fills  a  large  place  in  American  theological  history, 
would  have  echoed,  at  least  in  its  spirit.  But  here 
conies  a  voice  from  the  very  camp  of  Park  and  Taylor, 
a  voice  that  must  be  deemed  at  least  respectable,  to 
stigmatize  the  very  key  of  the  orthodox  position  as 
unsatisfactory  theological  essaying.  There  is  all 
the  more  force  in  the  thrust,  from  the  fact  that  the 
author  of  it  evidently  had  no  purpose  to  be  con- 
temptuous. He  simply  breaks  out  wi:h  lervent 
satisfaction  at  being  delivered  from  the  cruel  mer- 
cies of  a  sophistical  dogmatism. 

A    FALSE    USE    OF    SCRIPTURE    CONFESSED. 

It  is  from  Bible  to  Bible,  from  text  to  text,  nay 
from  sense  to  sense  within  the  same  texts,  that  Dr. 
Ives  has  made  this  journey  out  of  the  old  into  the 
new.  The  spectacle  is  an  instructive  one.  Dr. 
Ives  confesses  that  he  has  read  the  Bible  with 
blinded  eyes.  He  charges  this  blindness  in  part 
upon  the  use  of  commentators  ;  in  part  upon 
ideas  instilled^  into  him  from  childhood.  He  has 
doubtless  avoided  heterodox  commentators,  and 
has  studiously  used  such  helps  as  he  knew  would 
confirm  his  traditional  faith.  This  is  the  common 
course  of  lay,  and  even  of  clerical  study,  so  that 
most  are  in  precisely  the  position  which  Dr.  Ives 


24  THE  QUESTION  OF  HELL. 

says- that  he  was  in  until  lately  ;  they  read  what 
they  believe  and  believe  what  they  read,  and  are 
mere  devout  parrots  of  orthodox  tradition,  no  more 
grounded  in  thorough  intelligence  than  if  mind 
had  been  given  us  to  be  suppressed,  and  confession 
were  truest  as  a  service  of  the  lips,  irrespective  of 
the  motion  of  the  heart. 

UNCERTAINTIES     OF     ORTHODOX     INTERPRETATION. 

Dr.  Ives  is  now  confident  that  he  has  heretofore 
rested  in  a  plainly  erroneous  and  exceedingly  per- 
verse interpretation  of  Scripture.  If  this  be  in- 
deed so,  who  is  to  assure  us  that  average  orthodoxy 
is  not  equally  plunging  into  the  ditch,  not  merely 
as  it  must  be,  if  Dr.  Ives  is  now  right,  but  on 
other  momentous  points  of  faith  ?  How  does  Dr. 
Ives  know  that  his  eyes  are  even  now  open  to  the 
very  truth  of  God,  even  on  the  topic  to  which  Jiis 
new  views  relate  ? 

A  mere  shifting  of  the  kaleidoscope  of  texts  is 
alone  a  very  uncertain  ground  to  go  upon.  Dr. 
Ives  must  be  aware  that  even  the  Mormon  delusion 
is,  in  its  own  way,  mighty  in  the  Scriptures.  IJe 
sees,  in  Mr.  Constable's  admissions,  that  the  logic 
of  Universalist  argument  with  orthodoxy  has  been 
legitimate,  if  all  souls,  as  orthodoxy  assumes,  are 
indeed  immortal.  Many  a  hasty  disputant,  or 
even  wild  fanatic,  has  prayerfully  compared  his 


THE  QUESTION  OF  HELL.  25 

view  with  the  word  of  God,  and  found  pegs  enough 
to  hang  his  notions  on.  So  it  is  hardly  as  cheer- 
ful for  Dr.  Ives's  readers  as  for  himself,  to  find  how 
entirely  the  aspect  of  Scripture  teaching  has 
changed  in  his  mind,  and  how  very  sure  he  is  that 
he  was  until  lately  quite  blinded  by  false  notions, 
and  now  sees  holy  writ  as  it  really  is. 

WHY    NOT    A    STEP    FURTHER  ? 

May  it  not  be  that  he  who  lately  saw  not  at  all, 
now  barely  sees  men  as  trees  walking,  and  that 
another  point  of  view  would  occasion  a  further  rev- 
olution in  his  belief?  It  by  no  means  follows  that 
one  touch,  even  of  the  hand  which  is  miracle  itself, 
leaves  nothing  more  to  be  done.  Dr.  Ives  no  lon- 
ger believes  in  the  eternal  torture  of  souls  in  hell. 
If  he  were  to  go  and  wash  in  the  waters  of  a  purely 
spiritual  reading  of  Scripture,  he  might  see  the 
lost,  not  as  cinders  of  damnation,  but  as  brands 
snatched  from  the  burning,  saved  as  by  fire,  after 
some  method  worthy  at  once  of  perfect  justice  and 
absolute  mercy. 

A    SUSPICIOUS    FOUNDATION. 

It  is  a  curious  circumstance  that  the  turn  which 
orthodoxy  has  taken  in  the  convictions  of  Dr.  Ives, 
hinges  on  absolute  denial  of  the  great  doctrine  of 
the  immortality  of  the  soul.  And  we  must  say 
that  this  seems  a  very  suspicious  circumstance. 


26  THE  QUESTION  OF  HELL. 

Blinded  by  this  idea  of  the  soul's  immortality,  are 
all  men,  says  Dr.  Ives.  If  this  were  a  mere  dogma 
of  the  creed,  and  not  at  once  an  instinct  and  a 
reasoned  conviction  of  natural  religion,  it  would  be 
less  difficult  to  consent  to  the  account  which  Dr. 
Ives  gives  of  it. 

Or,  if  we  take  the  other  ground,  that  immortal- 
ity is  a  doctrine  of  special  revelation,  what  is  to 
become  of  the  claim  that  through  Christ  this  great 
hope  was  brought  to  light  ?  There  has  been  a 
grand  confidence  in  the  Christain  mind  because  of 
this  claim,  and  if  we  are  now  to  learn  that  this 
confidence  was  not  just,  the  situation  becomes  ex- 
ceedingly painful.  There  has  seemed  to  be  a  di- 
vine magnanimity  in  this  beam  of  light  out  of 
eternity,  touching  with  bright  promise  the  head  of 
every  creature,  and  to  withdraw  this,  and  say  that 
by  nature  we  were  never  meant  to  be  any  more 
than  the  beasts  that  perish,  and  that  only  to  such 
as  find  Christ  does  there  open  any  the  least  pros- 
pect of  continued  existence,  seems  like  a  shabby 
deception.  Doubtless  theology  has  been  in  some 
respects  a  shabby  deceiver,  but  this  great  tenet  of 
human  expectation  and  Christian  confidence,  has 
so  risen  on  the  world  with  immeasurable  splendor, 
and  has  had  such  a  career  of  inextinguishable 
brightness  through"  mid  heaven,  that  we  reluct- 
antly assist  as  docile  spectators  while  Dr.  Ives  and 


,THE  QUESTION  OF  HELL.  27 

another  excellent  gentleman  show  us  that  the 
beaming  eye  of  Godhead  is  only  a  lantern  after  all, 
and  to  that  man  as  man  the  path  of  existence  has 
never  known,  and  never  can  know,  the  light  of  day. 

THE  OLD  SERPENT  IN  ORTHODOXY. 

The  terms  in  which  Dr.  Ives  tenders  us  his  as- 
surance of  knowledge  on  this  subject,  add  to  the 
perplexity  with  which  we  listen  to  him.  The  idea 
of  immortality  he  pronounces  "  the  original  lie  of 
our  sinful  world/'  and  this  lie  he  finds  in  the  mouth 
of  "every  orthodox  religious  teacher,"  disguised  a 
little,  but  identical  with  the  primal  satanic  false- 
hood. The  blood  of  all  Christendom  is  poisoned. 
on  this  theory,  with  the  virus  of  the  Old  Serpent, 
and  where  theology  has  most  thought  that  its  work 
was  divinity,  it  has  really  blundered  into  diabolism. 

It  may  be  so.  The  heart  of  man  is  unquestion- 
ably deceitful,  and  desperately  perverse,  in  nothing 
more  than  in  its  dogmatic  conceits,  its  raw  opinion 
consecrated  by  long  tradition  under  the  name  of 
religion.  The  candid  scholar,  once  that  his  atten- 
tion is  called  to  the  subject,  must  confess  that  it  is 
quite  possible  that  some  of  our  most  cherished 
dogmas  are  really  no  better  than  survivals  of  hea- 
thenism, handed  down  from  age  to  age,  in  a  more 
and  more  disguised  form,  as  elements  of  revelation. 
But  if  this  is  the  case,  and  especially  if  it  has  been 


28  THE  QUESTION  OF  HELL. 

the  case  in  respect  of  one  of  the  great  points  of 
orthodoxy,  can  we  rest  so  easily  as  Dr.  Ives  does  in 
qualified  orthodoxy  ?  May  it  not  bo  that  the  sat- 
isfaction with  which  he  reflects  on  the  loss,  by  ex- 
tinction, of  a  large  part  of  mankind,  is  just  as  much 
from  the  Old  Serpent  as  the  view  on  that  subject 
which  Christians  generally  hold  ? 

FAITH    IN    HELL    BADLY    SHAKEN. 

Dr.  Ives  has  some  remarks  on  the  condition  of 
the  Christian  mind  on  the  question  of  eternal  pun- 
ishment, which  merit  a  moment's  consideration, 
before  we  proceed  to  the  larger  field  of  Mr.  Consta- 
ble's  argument.  Dr.  Ives  says  : 

"A  candid,  not  dogmatic  and  bitter,  review  of  the  grounds 
of  our  belief  regarding  future  punishment  is  greatly  needed 
at  the  present  day.  I  speak  for  the  laymen  as  one  of  them, 
and  I  know  also,  that  not  a  few  of  our  devout  and  thoughtful 
clergymen  have  Serious  difficulties  on  this  point  Hear  this 
testimony  from  that  -well-known  preacher  and  Bible  expos- 
itor, Rev.  Albert  Barnes.  Speaking  of  sin's  entrance  into  the 
world,  and  of  that  eternity  of  suffering  he  felt  constrained  to 
teach,  he  declares  : 

1 ' '  These  are  re;'?,  not  imaginary  difficulties.  .  .  I  confess, 
for  one,  I  feel  them,  and  feel  them  the  more  sensibly  and 
powerfully  the  more  I  look  at  them,  and  the  longer  I  live. 

.  I  do  not  know  that  I  have  a  ray  of  light  on  this  subject, 
which  I  had  not  when,  the  subject  first  flashed  across  my  soul. 
I  have  read,  to  some  extent,  what  wise  and  good  men  have 
written.  I  have  looked  at  their  various  theories  and  expla- 
nations. I  have  endeavored  to  weigh  their  arguments,  for 
my  whole  soul  pants  for  light  and  relief  on  these  questions. 
But  I  get  neither ;  and  in  the  distress  and  anguish  of  my  own 
spirit,  I  confess  that  I  see  no  light  whatever.  I  see  not  one 
ray  to  disclose  to  me  the  reason  why  sin  came  into  the  world  ; 
why  the  earth  is  strewed  with,  the  dying  and  the  dead,  and 


THE  Q  UES1ION  OF  HELL.  20 

why  man  must  suffer  to  all  eternity.  I  have  never  seen  a 
particle  of  light  thrown  on  these  subjects  that  has  given  a 
moment's  ease  to  my  tortured  mind.  .  .  It  is  all  dark — 
dark — dark,  to  my  soul,  and  I  cannot  disguise  it.' 

"' In  the  midst  of  this  gloom,'  as  he  styles  it,  Mr*.  Barnes 
comforts  himself  with  the  belief  that,  it  must  be  that  the 
Judge  of  all  the  earth  will  do  right,  though  appearances  are 
so  much  against  it;  it  seeming  never  to  occur  to  him  that  his 
own  theology,  and  not  the  revealed  truth,  is  here  at  fault. 
Others  of  our  religious  teachers  live  on  in  silence,  seeking 
relief  from  these  felt  difficulties  in  a  smothered  hope  in  uni- 
versal salvation,  or  at  least  a  final  restoration  of  the  wicked, 
or  else  they  fancy  a  probation  beyond  the  grave  ;  in  either 
case  failing  to  give  decided  utterance  ot  that  future  woe,  so 
solemnly  enforced  by  the  Great  Preacher." 

NO    LIGHT    IN    ORTHODOXY. 

That  neither  light  nor  relief  are  ever  found  by 
a  deeply  thoughtful  mind  in  strict  orthodoxy  ;  that 
they  are  very  commonly  found  in  a  smothered  hope 
of  universal  salvation,  or  of  final  restoration,  or  at 
least  of  a  probation  beyond  the  grave  ;  and  that  in 
this  state  of  the  case  doctrinal  teaching  has  become 
hesitating  and  reticent,  and  almost  imbecile,  are 
things  which  any  one  may  see  for  himself  after 
some  good  degree  of  acquaintance  with  the  move- 
ments of  the  orthodox  world. 

THE     NEW    CHRISTIAN    HOPE. 

About  the  only  thing  that  discreet  and  instruct- 
ed thinkers  now  pretend  to  say  is  that  it  must  be 
that  the  Judge  of  all  the  earth  will  do  right  ;  and 
very  few  of  these  can  deny  that  appearances,  on 
the  orthodox  theory,  are  anything  but  right.  We 


30  Till-:  QUESTION  Of  HELL. 

may  feel  pretty  sure,  therefore,  that  some  great 
overturning  is  in  preparation,  some  sweeping  round 
to  a  new  base  of  the  deathless  energies  of  our  faith, 
and  that  we  perhaps  who  live  may  be  even  now 
hearing  the  first  signals  of  the  greatest  change 
which  providence  and  spirit  have  yet  prepared  for 
Christian  mankind.  Let  us  then  with  unflinching 
courage  trim  and  refill  the  sacred  lamp  of  inquiry 
after  God,  and  wait  Avith  patience  for  the  glorious 
appearing  which  is  to  bring  a  new  heavens  and  a 
new  earth. 

THREE  OPINIONS  ABOUT  HELL. 

Mr.  Constable's  treatise,  to  which  reference  has 
been  made,  is  a  very  able  plea  for  a  peculiar  view 
of  eternal  punishment.  We  propose  to  follow  him 
through  the  more  striking  points  of  his  statement, 
and  to  make  the  course  of  his  argument  a  point  of 
departure  for  such  suggestions  as  we  desire  to 
offer.  The  initial  statement  of  Mr.  Constable's 
position  is  in  the  following  passage  : 

"  There  are  three  main  opinions  relative  to  this  punish- 
ment. One  of  these  makes  it  to  be  essentially  of  a  purgative 
nature,  to  be  temporary  in  its  deration,  and  to  have  as  its  issue 
the  restoration  of  all  to  God's  favor  and  eternal  happiness. 
This  was  the  opinion  of  Origen.  The  second  is  that  which 
has  long  been  most  commonly  received.  It  makes  punish- 
ment to  be  eternal  in  its  duration,  and  supposes  it  to  consist 
in  an  eternal  life  spent  in  misery  and  pain.  This  was  the 
theory  of  St.  Augustine.  According  to  the  third  opinion, 
punishment  is  also  eternal,  but  death,  i.  e.  the  loss  of  life,,  is  its 
essence,  attended  and  preceded  by  such  various  degrees  of 


THE  QUESTION  OF  HELL.  31 

pain  as  a  just  and  merciful  God,  for  wise  reasons,  sees  fit  to 
inflict.  The  third  of  these  opinions  is  the  one  here  main- 
tained. Its  establishment  will  of  course  set  aside  the  others. 
Its  eternal  duration  will  overthrow  that  oT  Origen  ;  its  char- 
acter, involving  a  state  of  death,  will  overthrow  alike  that  of 
Origen  and  Augustine." — p.  1. 

HELL    AS    PURGATION    OF    EVIL. 

Rearranging  for  our  own  purposes  the  course  of 
the  discussion,  we  will  first  hear  more  explicitly  in 
regard  to  the  view  here  connected  with  the  great 
name  of  Origen.  Mr.  Constable  has  this  to  say,  in 
further  explanation,  and  in  qualified  defence,  of 
this  view  : 

"  Origen  converts  hell  into  a  vast  purgatory,  and  sends  men 
and  devils  forth  from  it  purified  and  humbled  to  the  feet  of 
the  Great  Father  and  to  the  joys  which  are  at  his  right  hand 
forevermore."— p.  59. 

"  In  one  grand  feature  of  his  theory  he  commands  our 
entire  sympathy.  He  looked  forward  to  the  extinction  of 
evil.  His  yearning  for  it  was  true,  was  but  following  out  the 
judgment  and  reason  as  well  as  the  longing  of  every  right 
heart.  -We  cannot  look  at  evil — its  hatefulness,  its  misery,  its 
pollution  and  think  that  with  such  a  God  as  ours  this  evil 
will  be  permitted  to  extend  or  to  exist  forever.  So  thought 
Origen,  and  Scripture  bears  him  out." — p.  03. 

"Evil  is  not  to  be  eternal  .  .  .  God  has  pledged  his 
word  and  his  power  that  it  shall  be  abolished  and  destroyed. 
He  has  promised  a  '  restitution  of  all  ik'nys'  by  the  mouth  of  all 
his  holy  prophets  since  the  world  began." — p.  43. 

GOD    ETERNALLY    AGAINST    EVIL. 

Here  doubtless  is  the  deepest  foundation  on 
which  faith  can  build,  the  thought  of  God  as 
against  all  evil  forever.  If  we  can  tell  what  this 
against  all  evil -forever  should  really  mean,  and 


32  THE  QUESTION  OF  HELL. 

what  it  should  not  mean,  we  solve  the  problems  of 
divinity.  The  great  thing,  therefore,  is  to  discover 
how  to  keep  true  to  this  thought,  how  to  get  and 
to  apply  the  real  meaning  of  it. 

HOW    TO    BE    WITH    GOD    AGAINST    EVIL. 

As  far  as  we  know,  one  of  the  simplest  and  most 
exact  rules  for  this  momentous  business  of  keeping 
true  to  God,  as  the  perfection  of  resistance  to  evil, 
is  the  old  Hebrew  rule  "  To  do  justly,  to  love 
mercy,  and  to  walk  humbly  with  thy  God."  If 
our  concern  about  justice  is  practical  rather  than 
speculative  ;  if  from  it  we  proceed  to  active  love  of 
our  fellow-man,  after  the  manner  of  mercy,  which 
dictates  help,  redemption,  and  good  hope  ;  and  if 
we  bow  our  heads  in  simple  worship  before  God, 
not  attempting  to  read,  much  less  to  judge,  his 
plan  of  the  government  of  the  universe,  we  may 
expect  to  find  ourselves  becoming  rooted  in  a  true 
faith  in  God. 

ORTHODOX    DIVINITY    BEGINS    EXACTLY    WRONG. 

This  is  the  exact  opposite  of  the  usual  method 
in  divinity.  Commonly  our  teaching  puts  a  slight 
upon  mere  doing  justice  on  our  part,  and  demands 
rather  that  we  consider  what  is  the  infinite  justice, 
and  its  bearing  upon  our  own  fate.  So  far  from 
being  urged  to  rest  in  loving  mercy,  and  to  make 


THE  QUESTION  OF  HELL.  33 

this  the  vestibule,  as  it  were,  of  approach  to  God,  \ve 
are  bid  take  heed  to  the  Divine  wrath  and  our  own 
selfish  need  of  mercy,  and  to  look  out  for  our  own 
salvation,  and  rest  not  one  jot  in  trying  to  live  for 
others.  And  as  for  humility  as  the  ground  and 
rule  of  our  coming  to  God,  we  are  rather  summoned 
to  inordinate  ambition  to  enter  familiarly  into  a 
comprehensive  acquaintance  with  the  mind  and 
ways  of  Deity,  quite  as  if  our  salvation  depended 
on  our  knowing  a  fair  proportion  at  least  of  the 
secrets  of  the  universe,  and  on  our  taking  a  hand, 
at  least  by  proxy,  in  keeping  up  the  dignities  of 
Godhead.  This  scheme  of  obsequious  attention  in  the 
presence  of  God,  of  studying  mercy  as  from  God  to 
ourselves  instead  of  from  ourselves  to  our  fellows, 
and  of  slurring  righteousness  of  conduct  as  "  filthy 
rags"  in  the  sight  of  God,  exactly  reverses  the 
prophet's  rule,  on  no  ground  whatever  of  real 
truth. 

THE    SIMPLEST    DUTIES    OUR    CHIEF    CONCERN. 

It  is  both  clear  reason  and  evident  revelation 
that  our  chief  concern  is  with  our  nearest  and 
simplest  duties,  those  of  common  justice,  of  right 
conduct  of  man  with  man  ;  and  with  that  zvork  of 
good  will,  of  kindness  and  love,  of  tenderness  of 
heart,  which  has  grown  more  and  more  upon  the 
Christian  and  the  human  conscience  as  a  divine 


34  THE  QUESTION  OF  HELL. 

task  ;  and  that  when  we  have  thus  put  ourselves 
to  use,  and  have  done  with  our  might  whatever 
our  hands  find  to  do,  there  only  remains  to  us  the 
loyalty  of  humble  reliance  on  God,  submission' 
without  question  or  doubt,  the  submission  of  peni- 
tence, of  trust,  of  unspeakable  peace,  as  becomes 
children  taught  by  providence  and  spirit,  by  law? 
prophecy,  and  gospel,  to  say,  simply  and  sincerely, 
"  Our  Father." 

SYSTEMATIC    DIVINITY   A    DISTURBER. 

So  far  as  systematic  divinity  has  turned  men 
away  from  this  faith  and  practice  of  justice,  mercy, 
and  humble  confidence  in  G-od,  so  far  it  has  done 
wrong,  after  the  manner,  alas  !  of  human  conceit, 
which  is  not  the  manner  of  grace  and  truth.  The 
religious  world  is  filled  with  the  noise  of  loud  pre- 
tension, the  thousand  voices  of  ambition  to  stand 
high  before  God,  instead  of  to  walk  humbly  with 
him,  and  mercy  and  justice  are  thought  no  rules  at 
all  for  redemption,  but  only  incidents  of  that  pride 
of  near  approach  to  God  which  is  miscalled  faith. 

NO    EXCUSE    FOR    PHARISAIC    PRETENSION. 

The  putting  all  this  upon  the  name  of  Jesus 
makes  it  no  better.  To  be  ready  and  confident 
through  Jesus  in  no  way  excuses  the  mistake.  We 
may  mean  to  honor  Jesus  in  professing  an  exten- 
sive personal  acquaintance  with  the  plans  of  the 


THE  QUESTION  OF  HELL.  35 

Eternal  Mind,  and  in  attaching  ourselves  famil- 
iarly to  God,  assuming  for  ourselves  a  special  dig- 
nity of  peculiar  sonship,  and  we  may  think  we 
have  great  warrant,  in  Scripture  for  example,  for 
doing  this,  but  the  solemn  fact  is  that  no  possible 
warrant  can  justify  such  departure  from  simple 
humility  before  God. 

HUMILITY    BEFORE    GOD    AN    ABSOLUTE    DUTY. 

Let  us  hear  what  we  may,  or  think  what  we 
may,  our  place  remains  the  same,  that  of  humble 
confidence.  God  is  Infinite  King  and  Father  ; 
and  loyalty  of  trust  and  love  is  our  absolute,  our 
eternal,  duty.  What  we  can  have  of  this,  is  our 
whole  concern  ;  what  we  cannot  have,  we  can  mend 
only  by  what  we  have,  protesting  to  God  with  all 
our  might  our  utmost  belief,  and  with  our  equal 
might  praying  and  trusting  him  to  help  our  unbe- 
lief. This  is  that  fear  of  the  Lord  which  is  the 
beginning  of  wisdom,  and  that  faith  in  God  which 
is  the  perfection  of  wisdom. 

FIDELITY    BEFORE    ORTHODOXY. 

It  may  seem  difficult  to  reconcile  Scripture  and 
Christ  with  this,  but  not  for  that  are  we  warranted 
in  plunging  into  the  bog  of  a  still  greater  difficulty, 
that  in  which  Dr.  Barnes,  as  we  have  seen,  con- 
fesses that  he  had  floundered,  without  hope  or  help, 
all  his  days — the  difficulty  of  making  our  interpre- 


36  THE  QUESTION  OF  HELL. 

tation  consistent  with  the  faith  and  practice  of  jus- 
tice, mercy,  and  humble  reliance  on  God.  If  we 
cannot  arrive  at  both  a  true  fidelity  and  an  ortho- 
dox belief,  we  must  defer  the  latter  rather  than  the 
former,  until  by  fidelity  we  grow  up  unto  faith, 
according  to  the  method  of  coming  to  know  the 
doctrine,  by  doing  the  will. 

Custom  is  the  other  way,  in  consequence  of  the 
perverse  conceit  with  which  men  take  hold  of  the 
matter.  But  we  must  be  born  again  from  custom 
and  conceit,  in  order  to  reach  our  place  as  children 
of  God,  which  is  not  that  of  exegetes,  or  dogma- 
tists, or  ecclesiastics,  but  that  of  humility,  of  loyal- 
ty, of  trust,  devotion,  and  obedience. 

FILIAL   FAITH    IMPERATIVE. 

The  method  of  thrusting  Bible  and  Christ  be- 
tween the  soul  and  God,  and  of  fixing  selfish  inter- 
est on  these,  as  means  of  our  redemption,  has 
profoundly  disturbed  the  natural  order  of  religious 
experience.  No  means  of  grace,  no  agent  of  divine 
power,  no  person  even  of  Godhead,  can  properly  cut 
off  our  souls  from  the  Infinite  Fount,  or  rightly 
intercept  our  filial  trust. 

It  is  better  that  we  wholly  confine  our  attention 
to  Jesus  teaching  his  disciples  to  pray,  than  that 
we  permit  ourselves  to  wander  from  this  pattern  of 


THE  QUESTION  OF  HELL.  37 

simple  dependence  on  God  Our  Father,  simple  sub- 
mission to  him,  and  childlike  trust  in  his  care. 

NO  REAL  NEED  OF  MUCH  DOGMA. 

We  ought  continually  to  think  how  apostles 
even  had  to  be  brought  back,  as  when  a  little  child 
was  set  in  their  midst  to  be  a  lesson  to  them  of  the 
right  method  of  faith  ;  and  how  inevitably  the 
pride  of  opinion  has  carried  belief  into  far  too  much 
dogma,  and  along  paths  of  questionable  and  use- 
less interpretation. 

Suppose  that  we  cannot  read  the  Bible  aright 
in  all  its  parts,  and  cannot  justly  weigh  the  prob- 
lems which  are  become  a  jungle  of  theories  about 
the  person  of  Jesus.  We  can  at  least  wait  on  the 
spirit  and  providence  of  God  for  guidance  in  the 
matter,  and  meanwhile  attend  with  all  our  might 
to  the  simpler,  yet  not  smaller,  nor  less  significant 
task,  of  doing  justly,  loving  mercy,  and  walking 
humbly  with  God  after  the  instruction  of  Jesus  in 
the  "  Our  Father."  And  if  to  us  so  occupied  there 
come  any  wild  heathen  fear  that  the  Father  will 
murder  the  children  that  cry  unto  him  in  simple 
trust,  we  can  say  to  such  fear,  even  if  it  wear  the 
mask  and  boast  the  dignities  of  a  theological  sys- 
tem, Get  thee  behind  me  SATAN. 

FAITH  IN  UNIVERSAL    PURIFICATION    IS    CHRISTIAN. 

To  apply  this  view  to  what  Mr.  Constable  tells 


38  THE  QUESTION  Of  HELL. 

us  that  Origen  taught  of  the  fate  of  souls,  we  need 
but  mark  the  terms  of  the  teaching  in  question,  as 
these  are  put  by  Mr.  Constable.  It  "  sends  men 
and  Devils  forth  from  purgatorial  hell  purified  and 
humbled  to  the  feet  of  the  Great  Father."  We 
omit  the  mention  of  "  restoration  to  God's  favor 
and  eternal  happiness,"  us  not  part  of  the  main 
point  of  the  theory.  That  point  is  candidly  ex- 
pressed in  the  words  just  quoted  ;  and  we  presume 
no  one  can  question  that  filial  fear  of  God  must 
rejoice  to  think  of  the  possibility  that  all  the  evil 
shall  be  made  good.  It  may  not  be  necessary  to 
humble  trust  in  God  to  assume  that  this  will  be 
so,  but  such  trust  can  hardly  help  looking  forward 
to  it  with  very  considerable,  if  not  with  very  strong 
faith.  And  the  fact  actually  is,  that  simple  faith 
in  God  very  commonly  grows  into  a  good  degree  of 
expectation  that  all  souls  will  be  purified  and  hum- 
bled by  all  discipline,  here  or  hereafter,  and  so 
made  true  children  of  God. 

DOGMATIC  HORROR  OF  REDEMPTION. 

Mr.  Constable  is  very  far  indeed  from  having 
this  faith  ;  for  he  breathes  fury  almost  against  the 
large  hope  to  which  it  leads.  Thus  he  says  : 

"This  view  would,  we  firmly  believe,  if  commonly  be- 
lieved, in  a  single  generation  reduce  the  morals  of  the  world 
to  a  level  with  those  of  Sodom." 


THE  QUESTION  OF  HELL.  30 

Again  he  says  : 

"  In  Origin's  view  of  the  future,  a  view  now  fast  spread- 
ing, we  see  the  real  cause  of  the  emphatic,  repeated,  awful 
declarations  of  the  eternity  of  future  punishment.  That  view, 
so  pleasing  to  fallen  human  nature,  was  the  view  against 
which  the  Spirit  of  God  laid  down  in  Scripture  the  warnings 
of  everlasting  destruction,  of  unquenchable  fire.  Experience 
has  proved  the  necessity  of  this.  Even  in  the  face  of  these 
Scriptures  men  are  found  to  advocate  the  hope  of  a  restora- 
tion from  hell.  Far  more  than  Augustine's  theory  does  the 
view  here  maintained  root  out  this  false  delusive  hope.  So 
!ong  as  men  believe  that  life  is  not  extinguished  in  hell,  so 
long  they  will  nourish  hope.  They  will  cherish  the  idea  that 
somewhere  down  through  the  ages,  when  .the  groans  of  hell 
have  been  beating  sadly,  ceaselessly,  at  the  gates  of  heaven, 
the  message  of  mercy  find  deliverance  may  again  be  sent 
down,  even  as  God  used  to  send  it  of  old  to  Israel  groaning 
beneath  the  bondngo  of  Egypt,  Philistia,  and  Canaan.  Death 
extirpates  all  such  hopes.  "'  Corruption  has  a  hope  of  a  kind 
of  removal,  but  death  has  everlasting  ruin,'" — p.  35. 

Mr.  Constable  knows  a  great  deal  too  much  of 
the  purpose  and  meaning  of  Scripture.  The  lan- 
guage "emphatic,  repeated,  awful  declarations  of 
the  eternity  of  future  punishment/'  is  his  own  pri- 
vate invention.  But  if  such  a  text  were  in  Scrip- 
ture, it  would  yet  become  us  to  pause  before  it, 
and  by  no  means  to  look  through  it  into  bottomless 
horror.  Mr.  Constable  advances  a  rather  crazy 
opinion  when  he  tells  us  that  faith  in  the  divine 
recovery  of  all  souls  to  obedience,  would  in  a  sin- 
gle generation  reduce  the  morals  of  the  world  to  a 
level  with  those  of  Sodom.  Frantic  exclamation 
of  this  sort  shows  a  habit  of  mind  the  very  oppo- 
site to  that  of  iaith.  To  call  it  infidelity  would 


10  THE  QUESTION  OF  HELL. 

be  harsh,  and  yet  it  has  the  tone  of  desperate  un- 
belief. 

INFIDELITY    OF    DOGMA. 

What  a  lack  .of  faith  in  man,  to  assume  that 
but  for  the  fear  of  hell  we  should  have  Sodom  at 
once  !  What  frightful  doubt  of  God's  control,  to 
suppose  that  it  hangs  on  human  opinion  on  this 
subject  !  But  no  sane  man  really  has  this  lack  of 
faith  in  man  and  in  God.  It  is  without  stopping 
to  think,  and  out  of  a  wild  fervor  of  mere  feeling, 
that  Mr.  Constable  says  that  he  "firmly  believes." 
It  is  an  orthodox  exclamation,  not  a  Christian  con- 
fession. 

NO    ASSURANCE    OF    HELL    NEEDED. 

Mr.  Constable  is  aware  that  a  hopeful  view  of 
future  existence  is  "  now  last  spreading."  He  ad- 
mits that  "  men  are  found  to  advocate  a  restoration 
from  hell."  Indeed,  he  candidly  avows  that  this 
must  be  so  ;  that,  so  long  as  the  lost  continue  to 
exist,  some  one  will  nourish  hope  for  them.  And 
he  claims  it  as  a  grand  merit  of  his  theory  that  it 
cuts  off  such  trusting  hope,  as  no  other  theory 
does.  Here  again  he  runs  before  he  is  sent.  The 
children  of  God  do  not  require  insurance  against 
the  redemption  of  the  lost. 

AN    INFINITE    OPEN    HOPE. 

On  the  contrary,  they  do  require  an  infinite  open 


THE  QUESTION  OF  HELL.  41 

hope.  They  may  fear  the  worst  on  many  grounds, 
and  may  really"  hope  and  believe  only  where  their 
affections  are  engaged,  or  after  they  have  reached 
a  profound  knowledge  of  faith  working  by  love, 
but  in  no  case  do  they  require,  or  should  they  per- 
mit, hope  to  be  closed  and  trust  to  be  cut  off. 
When,  therefore,  Mr.  Constable,  or  any  other  dog- 
matist, undertakes  to  put  everlasting  ruin  at  the 
end  of  faith's  prospect  of  the  destiny  of  all  souls, 
he  does  exactly  the  wrong  thing.  If  the  books  of 
hope  are  ever  closed,  it  will  be  by  no  hand  other 
than  that  of  final  divine  purpose.  Anticipation  of 
that  purpose  is  contrary  to  the  law  of  Christian 
faith. 

DOGMATIC    RAGE. 

Origen's  handling  of  Scripture  excites  the  ire 
and  scorn  of  Mr.  Constable,  as  the  following  sen- 
tences will  show  : 

"  Origcn  never  found  any  difficulty  in  Scripture.  If  it  was 
for  him,  well  and  good  [f  it  was  against  him,  he  made  it 
•without  any  ceremony  speak  as  he  wished." 

"  Every  reader  of  Scripture  knows  that  its  solemn  warn- 
ings are  addressed  to  the  sinner  in  person :  '  0  wicked  man,  thou 
shall  surely  die.'  Death,  Destruction,  Perdition,  Loss  of  Life 
— all  the  multiplied  phrases  and  illustrations  of  the  Bible  are 
there  directed  against  the  persons  of  the  wicked.  Origen's 
simple  mode  of  neutralizing  their  force  is  by  directing  them 
against  their  sin  A.nd  so  his  point  is  gained.  Their  force 
cannot  be  too  strong  for  him,  so  he  does  not  attempt  to  di- 
minish it.  The  Augustinian,  directing  them  against  the  sin- 
ner, robs  them  of  their  meaning  :  Origen  directing  them 
against  the  sin,  leaves  them  their  proper  sense.  Both  pervert 


42  THE  Q  UESTION  OF  HELL. 

Scripture,  and  it  is  difficult  to  say  against  which  the  charge 
is  the  heaviest. 

We  meet  with  Origen's  free  and  easy  method  of  Scripture 
everywhere  throughout  his  writings.  Whatever  be  our  opin- 
ion of  Origen  personally,  of  his  learning,  his  brilliancj',  even 
of  the  truth  of  much  of  his  teaching,  his  teaching  here  places 
him  among  those  prophets  condemned  by  Ezekiel  for 
4  strengthening  the  hands  of  the  wicked,  that  he  should  not 
return  from  his  wicked  way,  by  promising  him  life." — p.  62. 

INADVERTENT    FALSEHOOD. 

The  last  word  of  this  quotation  is  one  of  those 
inadvertent  untruths  which  crowd  the  history  of 
theological  controversy.  Neither  Origen,  nor  Ori- 
gen's hopeful  theory,  aim  in  the  slightest  degree  to 
strengthen  the  hands  of  the  wicked,  that  he  should 
not  return  from  his  wicked  way.  The  sole  aim  of 
this  theory  is  to  strengthen  right,  and  bring  man 
back  to  God.  To  threaten  severe,  sin-crushing 
discipline,  with  the  minatory  promise  that  it  will 
be  insisted  on  to  the  bitter  end,  and  made  as  ef- 
fectual as  the  very  furnace  of  fire  is  to  gold  in  the 
refiner's  hands,  is  the  exact  opposite  of  giving  aid 
and  comfort  to  the  wicked. 

PURGATION    THE    TRUE    SEVERITY. 

The  reaction  against  violent  orthodoxy  has  per- 
haps worn  an  appearance  of  getting  the  sinner  off, 
of  rescuing  him  from  penalty,  of  breaking  down 
the  tremendous  severities  of  discipline,  but  this  is 
no  part  ol  a  wise  hope  in  the  redemptive  efficacy 
of  the  divine  justice.  On  the  contrary,  such  a 


THE  Q  UES2ION"  OF  HELL.  43 

hope,  held  with  humility  not  less  than  confidence, 
affords  the  best  possible  ground  on  which  to  build 
a  thorough,  irresistible  doctrine  of  the  divine  se- 
verity against  sin.  It  has  no  appearance  of  injus- 
tice, yet  lacks  no  rigor  of  infinite  regard  for  law, 
;;ince  it  at  once  asserts  law  effectually  over  all  the 
disobedient,  and  makes  this  assertion  a  perfect 
moral  benefit  to  the  sufferer,  as  well  as  to  creature 
society  in  general.  If  searching  rebuke  of  sin  is 
to  come  back  to  our  pulpits,  it  must  be  when  the 
stroke  of  severity  is  at  once  weighted  and  steadied 
by  the  certainty  that  we  may  justly  have  good 
hope  of  the  perfect,  the  universal  and  absolute, 
efficiency  of  the  divine  discipline. 

ETERNAL  DEATH  TO  SIN. 

It  is  wholly  untrue,  then,  that  hope  promises 
life  to  the  wicked,  that  he  should  not  return  from 
his  wicked  way.  It  promises  death  rather,  and  a 
death  more  significant  and  effectual  than  extinc- 
tion. Our  spirits  can  resist  torrnent,  especially 
when  we  distinctly  anticipate  a  final  end  of  pain. 
Milton  obeyed  a  just  instinct  in  making  the  cour- 
age and  greatness  of  Satan  more  than  a  match,  in 
a  moral  point  of  view,  for  the  wrath  of  Jehovah. 
'It  is  a  petty  and  vulgar -justice  which  deals  in  vin- 
dictive torment,  and  against  such  a  justice  even  the 
breast  of  mortal  man  is  triply  armed.  And  if  such 


44  THE  Q  UESTION  Of  HELL. 

a  justice  proposes  to  kill  as  well  as  to  injure,  it  is 
not  very  difficult  for  the  creature  to  accept  the 
chance,  and  make  the  most  of  its  defeat  of  God. 
It  will  at  least  have  an  end,  extinction,  and  he  that 
tortures  and  kills  will  make  nothing  out  of  it,  un- 
less it  be  a  pleasure  in  working  torment,  which 
hardly  a  devil  would  be  so  devilish  as  to  take. 

But  death  to  desires,  to  purposes,  to  that  in  our 
very  nature  which  works  evil,  is  a  visitation  worthy 
the  name  of  death.  Not  only  is  it  a  death  which 
avenges  law  upon  us  and  in  us,  but  it  is  a  death 
Avhich  steals  upon  our  false  choice,  our  wrong  will, 
our  darkened  thought,  with  terrors  whose  hue  is 
indeed  that  of  eternity. .  * 

NOT  THE  TEXTS  BUT  THE  FAITH. 

Mr.  Constable  thinks  it  a  free  and  easy  method 
which  the  advocate  of  hope  uses  in  his  handling  of 
Scripture.  It  may  be  so,  but  it  is  at  least  the 
method  of  faith.  We  are  not  required  to  digest 
the  promiscuous  letter  of  Scripture.  On  the  con- 
trary, we  are  free  to  take  and  eat  as  we  can,  ac- 
cordinging  to  our  laith,  never  going  against  faith 
merely  to  swallow  a  text.  Some  of  us  may  under- 
stand much,  and  some  of  us  may  understand  very 
little,  of  Scripture  ;  that  does  not  so  much  matter, 
if,  so  far  as  we  go,  we  keep  the  rule  of  faith. 


THE  Q ITESTION  OF  HELL.  45 

IN    SPIRIT    AND    TRUTH. 

We  cannot  keep  two  rules  at  once  ;  we  cannot 
serve  the  spirit  and  yet  be  slaves  to  the  letter.  If 
.we  bind  ourselves  to  the  letter  then  we  must  stand 
largely  free  from  the  spirit ;  while  if  we  bind  our- 
selves to  the  spirit  we  must  stand  largely  free  from 
the  texts,  until  we  learn  how  to  see  the  spirit  in 
them.  Common  orthodox  service  is  in  the  letter, 
but  the  truer  Christian  service  is  in  spirit  and  in 
truth.  So  it  must  be  easy  for  faith  to  evade  the 
text,  not  by  denial,  but  by  patient  expectation  of 
a  new  light  in  it.  And  Christianity  especially  se- 
cures to  us  the  fullest  freedom  to  confine  our  wor- 
ship to  spirit  and  truth  in  the  inner  man.  Dog- 
matists who  thrust  upon  us  either  this  mountain 
or  that,  offend  against  the  distinctive  character  of 
Christian  doctrine.  To  all  their  systems  faith 
says,  "  Be  ye  taken  up,  and  be  ye  cast  into  the 
depths  of  the  sea,"  and  it  shall  be  done. 

ORTHODOXY    A    HUMAN    INVENTION. 

Mr.  Constable  is  unsparing  in  his  criticism  of  the 
•way  in  which  the  current  orthodoxy  makes  out  its 
case.  One  of  his  exclamatory  statements,  intrin- 
sically worthless  as  it  is,  will  yet  serve  as  a  sugges- 
tion to  our  reflections  upon  the  intellectual  condi- 
tion of  the  average  orthodox  mind.  It  is  as 
follows  : 


46  THE  QUESTION  OF  HELL, 

"Ah  !  may  we  not  well  enquire  whether  the  Church  of 
to-day  is  not,  like  the  Pharisees  of  old,  '  teaching  for  doc- 
trines the  commandments  of  men  ?'  " 

As  Mr.  Constable  makes  this  enquiry,  it  amounts 
only  to  an  exaggerated  expression  of  his  hostility 
to  hell  with  a  dum  rather  than  hell  with  a  dee.  In 
itself,  however,  and  on  broad  general  grounds,  the 
question  is  one  which  forces  itself  upon  Christian 
attention.  The  long  career  of  orthodoxy,  Catholic 
or  Protestant,  has  borne  fruits  which  compel  faith 
to  precisely  this  inquiry,  whether  men  have  not 
put  their  own  notions  in  place  of  the  divine  word  ? 
And  taking  the  verdict  of  each  class  of  believers 
separately,  we  find  the  opinion  universal  that  this 
has  been  done. 

HEADY    HUMAN    OPINION. 

No  sect  accuses  itself,  but  every  one  accuses  an- 
other, with  a  degree  of  judgment  which  is  itself 
manifestly  contrary  to  faith.  The  Catholics  ex- 
clude all  Protestants,  as  no  better  than  aliens  and 
infidels,  and  support  their  exclusion  by  a  majority 
vote  of  Christendom.  The  Protestants  in  their 
turn  exclude  the  Catholics,  and  sustain  their  judg- 
ment by  the  undoubted  weight  of  the  more  intel- 
ligent class  of  believers.  Among  Protestants 
every  sect  without  exception  lies  under  the  ban  of 
other  sects  on  some  grave  point  of  faith  and  pracr 


THE  QUESTION  OF  HELL.  47 

tice,  to  the  extent  of  actually  being  voted  clown  by 
a  majority  of  Protestants  on  the  point  or  points 
which  it  individually  cherishes. 

Thus  it  is  the  common  charge  everywhere  that 
human  notions  have  intruded  upon  divine  truth. 
And  the  spirit  of  this  charge  is,  to  a  very  large  ex- 
tent, a  spirit  of  anxious  superstition,  of  intense 
self-will,  no  more  Christian  than  a  similar  spirit 
among  heathen.  Men  act  as  if  they  were  afraid 
God  would  kill  them  if  they  exercised  charity,  and 
they  push  their  objections  to  their  brethren  with  a 
heat  which  has  far  more  assertion  of  will  in  it  than 
love  of  truth,  of  man,  or  of  God. 

BAD    IlEPUTE    OF    ORTHODOXY. 

The  brand  on  all  the  theologies  of  Christendom 
is  "odium  theologicum  /"  the  just  reflection  of 
mankind  is,  "  How  these  dogmatists  hate  one  an- 
other !  "  And  with  such  an  appearance  it  is  fair  to 
presume  that  there  has  been,  to  some  degree,  and 
however  unwittingly  and  innocently,  a  comprehen- 
sive "teaching  for  doctrines  the  commandments  of 
men." 

"  Beware  of  the  leaven  of  the  Pharisees,"  and 
"  Get  thee  behind  me,"  and  similar  short  and  sharp 
methods  with  the  tendency  to  this  very  mistake, 
were  necessary  in  the  beginning,  and  seem  not  less 
necessary  now.  Nor  can  it  surprise  us,  when  we 


48  THE  QUESTION  OF  HELL. 

reflect  how  nearly  impossible  simplicity  of  alle- 
giance, by  justice,  and  mercy,  and  humble  trust,  is, 
and  how  natural  it  is  to  want  some  great  place, 
even  of  penitence  and  humility,  and  some  conspic- 
uous ground  and  lofty  standing,  even  though  it  be 
for  shame  and  punishment,  or  for  redemption  by 
rescue  out  of  the  very  burnings  of  wrath. 

ORTHODOX    LOUDNESS    AND    DIVINE    SILENCE. 

The  dogmatic  mind  swells  with  a  sense  of  the 
spectacular  importance  of  sin,  and  punishment, 
and  atonement,  and  sniffs  at  the  thought  of  a  silent 
operation  of  God  with  his  creatures,  and  of  a  quiet 
return  of  the  soul  to  holiness  and  heaven.  It  is 
not  in  any  of  the  great  theologies  that  the  spirit 
bloweth  as  it  listeth,  or  that  God  comes  to  the 
heart  of  man  with  still  small  voice.  Neither 
Catholicism,  nor  Calvinism,  nor  Methodism,  nor 
Unitarianism,  will  ever  have  it  said  of  its  mean- 
ing, "  Thou  canst  not  tell  whence  it  comet  h  nor 
whither  it  goeth."  If  there  were  not  a  Christian- 
ity which  doth  not  cry  in  the  creeds,  and  a  Christ 
whose  voice  is  not  heard  in  the  proof  texts,  and  a 
power  of  God  working  in  us  above  all  that  we  ask 
or  profess,  all  that  we  think  or  pretend,  it  would 
be  to  little  purpose  to  prefer  the  Christian  name 
to  a  heathen,  or  to  imagine  that  religion  has  en- 
during and  redeeming  power. 


THE  QUESTION  OF  HELL.  49 

SURVIVAL    OF    HKATHEN    METHOD    AND    FAITH. 

On  very  broad  grounds,  then,  we  think  it  very 
pertinent  to  inquire  "  whether  the  church  of  to- 
day is  not,  like  the  Pharisees  of  old,  l  teaching  for 
doctrines  the  commandments  of  men  ;'  "  and  of 
heathen  men  at  that.  The  result  of  such  an  in- 
quiry would  bear  very  materially  upon  the  solution 
of  the  problems  brought  before  us  in  Mr.  Consta- 
ble's pamphlet,  since  it  seems  highly  probable  that 
the  blackness  of  darkness  which  rests  upon  the  or- 
thodox solution  of  those  problems,  is  directly  due 
to  a  survival  of  heathen  methods  and  beliefs,  and 
since  also  we  may  reasonably  surmise  that  even 
Mr.  Constable's  variation  of  the  doctrine  of  perdi- 
tion has  no  warrant  beyond  the  same  shadow  of 
heathen  terror  and  heathen  opinion. 

FEEBLE    WITNESS    OF    BIBLE    TO    HELL. 

^ 

Mr.  Constable  takes  in  hand  the  orthodox  ap- 
peal to  the  Bible,  with  as  little  reserve  as  if  he  had 
not  lately  held  an  orthodox  view  himself.  It 
would  be  interesting  to  know  how  commonly 
preachers  of  the  eternity  of  future  misery  meet 
the  difficulty  described  in  the  following  : 

"Has  it  never  occurred  to  the  reader,  as  to  myself,  when 
searching  for  biblical  language  in  which  to  present  and  en- 
force the  eternity  of  future  suffering,  to  be  surprised  and 
puzzled  to  observe  how  unsatisfactory  and  feeble  seem  all  the 
Apostolic  references  to  future  unending  woe  ?  " 


50  Tim  QUESTION  OF  HELL. 

THE  BIBLE  DOES  NOT  CUT  OFF  HOPE. 

Mr.  Constable  catches  but  a  glimpse  of  a  very 
large  and  very  significant  fact,  enough  for  his 
small  purpose  of  shifting  the  stage  scenery  of  hell, 
but  not  enough  for  securing  a  just  view  of  the  mo- 
mentous topic  under  discussion.  That  fact  is 
that  we  have  no  firm  ground  in  either  evangelist  or 
apostle  for  cutting  off  the  operation  of  Christian 
faith,  in  the  case  of  the  lost,  and  hence  are  not 
warranted  in  doing  this. 

NO    DEMONSTRATION    OF    HELL. 

Faith  issues  in  hope  at  least,  if  not  in  trust,  or 
even  in  the  perfect  love  whose  covenant  cannot  be 
broken,  and  only  the  strongest  demonstration  could 
stop  this  action  of  faith.  Such  demonstration 
does  not  exist.  Whatever  does  exist  is  simply 
matter  for  reserved  inquiry,  without  perplexity, 
least  of  all  doubt  and  despair.  If  we  cannot  dis- 
pose of  it  we  can  at  least  let  it  alone,  and  go  about 
the  business  of  faith,  trusting  that  by  doing  what 
is  practical  we  shall  in  due  time  wholly  under- 
stand. 

The  case  which  Mr.  Constable  finds  feeble  and 
unsatisfactory,  was  never  meant  to  be  anything 
else,  and  even  the  case  which  Mr.  Constable  sticks 
in,  that  of  his  own  idea  of  hell,  would  seem  no 


THE  QUESTION  OF  IiJJLL.  51 

less  weak  and  unimportant,  if  due  heed  were  paid 
to  the  point  of  view  of  pure  and  simple  faith. 

A  "BASELESS  AND  HORRID  CREED." 
It  is  easy  for  Mr.  Constable  to  see  how  foolishly 
the  orthodox  mind  falls  into  the  ditch  of  a  "base- 
less and  horrid  creed.''     For  example,  the  follow- 
ing are  some  of  his  sentences  : 

"  The  ordinary  Greek  Lexicon,  not  lexicons  of  the  New 
Testament,  colored  and  tainted  by  theological  opinion,  is  the 
true  guide  to  the  Greek  of  the  New  Testament. —p.  14.  .  . 

.  .  Dictionaries  of  the  New  Testament,  and  commenta- 
tors on  it,  may,  if  they  please,  put  upon  the  phrase  the  sense 
of  '  Iwppincfia'  in  the  numberless  passages  where  it  occurs,  but 
we  deny  10  them  the  right  to  alter  the  meaning  of  a  well  un- 
derstood Grecian  word  for  the  sake  of  bolstering  up  their 

baseless  and  horrid  creed. — p.  10 That  is  what 

the  holders  of  Augustine's  theory  have  done.  They  put  an 
insufficient,  and  inapposite,  an  unnatural,  or  a  positively  false 
meaning  on  the  most  important  terms  of  the  Tsew  Testament. 
"With  them  death  means  life,  and  life  means  happiness,  and 
so  on.  Having  put  these  convenient  meanings  on  the  phrase- 
ology of  Scripture,  interpreted  as  they  would  not  dare  to 
interpret  the  code  of  a  human  legislator,  they  can  look  placidly 
on  a  thousand  passages  which  contradict  what  they  tench 
from  platform,  and  pulpit,  and  press,  and  instil  into  children's 
minds  almost  with  their  mother's  milk." — p.  59. 

"We  now  come  to  the  famous  passages  in  the  Book  of 
Revelation.  Driven  hopelessly  from  the  plainer  parts  of 
Scripture,  the  advocates  of  eternal  life  in  bell  think  that  they 
have  in  this  obscure,  mysterious,  and  highly-wrought  figura- 
tive book,  at  least  two  passages  which  authorize  them  to  change 
numberless  passages  in  the  rest  of  Scripture,  and  some  even 
in  the  Book  of  Revelation  itself,  from  their  plain  and  obvi- 
ous meaning  to  one  thr.t  is  forced,  unnatural,  and  often  false 
to  all  the  laws  of  the  interpretation  of  language." — p.  30. 

HOW    TO    BOLSTER    UP    HEATHENISM. 

If  Mr.  Constable  unwittingly  held,  or  deliber- 


52  IHE  QUESTION  OF  HELL. 

ately  held,  not  long  since,  a  baseless  and  horrid 
theological  opinion  ;  if  he  did  this  by  altering  the 
meaning  of  well  understood  words,  and  by  putting 
a  positively  false  meaning  on  most  important  proof- 
texts  ;  if  he  dared  to  interpret  the  Bible  any  way 
and  every  way  to  suit  the  exigencies  of  a  heathen 
dogma, — and  all  this  he  brings  against  his  recent 
self  and  his  orthodox  brethren, — we  may  well  as- 
sume that  the  method  which  leads  to  such  results 
is  a  very  doubtful  one. 

THE    SACRIFICE    OF    TRUTH    AND    RIGHT. 

Oar  own  observation  had  prepared  us  for  Mr. 
Constable's  confession  of  orthodox  want  of  verac- 
ity and  exegetical  rectitude.  It  seems  quite  right 
to  the  orthodox  mind  to  accept  as  from  God  a  hor- 
rid opinion,  however  baseless  simple  faith  may  find 
it.  The  idea  is  that  by  so  doing  the  mind  makes 
a  suitable  sacrifice  to  God.  And  who  is  to  tell  the 
deluded  worshipper,  that  every  such  sacrifice  is  es- 
sentially heathen. 

SERVING    GOD    WITH    LYING   LIPS. 

The  heathen  habit  of  mind,  panic  fear  before 
God,  and  the  heathen  opinion,  that  God  demands 
the  flow  of  blood,  figurative  if  not  literal,  some 
sacrifice  of  the  best,  remain  in  full  vigor  with  the 
average  orthodox  pietist.  And  with  God  looking 
on  to  damn  him  if  he  flinch  or  fail,  why  should  he 


THE  QUESTION  OF  HELL.  53 

not  hustle  texts  into  any  convenient  form,  regard- 
less of  their  individual  significance,  and  only  at- 
tentive to  the  exigencies  of  his  sacrifice  ?  Is  a 
man  to  heed  the  probable  individual  purpose  of  a 
verse  of  Scripture,  when,  if  he  should  be  misguided 
by  evident  appearances,  he  may  have  to  go  to  hell 
for  his  blunder  ?  Is  he  not  more  likely,  under  the 
influence  of  fear  and  of  concern  for  self,  to  make  a 
safe  use  of  a  text,  rather  than  an  apparently  true 
one  ?  What  is  the  appearance  of  truth  but  that 
reflection  of  reason  which  superstition  delights  to 
sacrifice  ?  The  common  plea  to  this  day  of  aver- 
age orthodoxy  is  that  we  should  bow  reason  to 
God,  and  that  it  is  safest  to  see  God  in  the  dogma 
which  Mr.  Constable  has  found  courage  to  call 
baseless  and  horrid. 

HOPELKSS    DISHONESTY    OF    ORTHODOXY. 

So  long  therefore  as  concern  for  safety  is  the  first 
motive  to  religion,  and  the  opinion  that  God  is 
pleased  with  anything  but  truth  and  right  holds 
full  sway,  so  long  will  pietists  twist  evident  facts 
to  support  horrid  opinions.  Mr.  Constable  him- 
self is  not  yet  out  of  the  meshes  of  this  false  and 
selfish  method. 

THE  PRACTICAL  FAILURE  OF  HELL. 

The  practical  failure  of  the  doctrine  of  hell  is 
sketched  by  Mr.  Constable  in  the  following  terms  : 


54  THE  Q  UESIION  OF  HELL. 

"  It  has  often  beea  remarked  that  where  a  punishment  felt 
to  be  excessive  is  threatened, — it  wholly  fails  of  its  effect. 
The  criminal  is  satisfied  that  it  will  not  be  executed.  It  is 
thus  with  the  theory  of  everlasting  misery  as  a  punishment 
for  human  sin.  It  is  practically  disbelieved.  The  sinner  takes 
refuge  from  it  in  a  thousand  ways.  The  greater  portion  of 
the  professing  Christian  Church  has  adopted  purgatory  as  an 
escape  for  them  from  this  hell.  Even  for  those  who  cannot 
accept  a  purgatory  the  vulgar  notion  of  hell  has  no  practical 
terrors.  Even  if  they  dp  not  reject  it  altogether  as  a  mere 
bugbear,  they  do  not  believe  in  it  for  themselves.  A  change  of 
life,  a  word  of  penitence  at  the  last,  a  sigh  of  sorrow  for  the 
past  as  the  soul  is  leaving  its  tabernacle,  .will  surely  avert 
from  them  a  fate  too  terrible  for  a  merciful  God  to  inflict 
And  so  the  very  transcendent  terrors  of  the  vulgar  hell  defeat 
the  object  of  threatened  penalty,  for  few,  if  any,  believe  in 
its  infliction  on  themselves." — p,  64. 

FAITH    CASTS    OUT    FEAR. 

It  is  a  significant  illustration  of  the  doom  of  the 
dogmatist  to  blindness  of  mind,  that  Mr.  Consta- 
ble does  not  see  that  every  word  of  this  tells  just  as 
forcibly  against  one  sort  of  eternal  perdition  as  an- 
other. Does  Mr.  Constable  suppose  that  "the 
greater  portion  "of  the  Christian  Church"  will  be  so 
pleased  at  the  idea  of  burning  people  all  up  in 
hell,  as  to  give  up  a  hope  of  purgatorial  discipline, 
and  that  too  when  this  hope  is  in  the  strictest  anal- 
ogy with  simple  faith?  Or  is  it  to  be  presumed  that 
the  great  mass  of  unbelievers,  who  put  aside  the 
common  idea  of  hell,  on  various  grounds,  will  not 
just  as  readily  evade  any  other  idea  of  terrible 
damnation?  It  does  not  rob  perdition  of  all  its 
terrors  to  make  it  a  death  of  the  soul  after  a  season 


r!HE  Q  UE8TION  OF  HELL.  55 

of  torment.  This  also  is  too  incredible  to  be  prac- 
tically believed  by  any  one  who  would  not  believe 
the  orthodox  notion.  Timid  pietists  will  creep 
away  from  the  shadow  of  either  terror  ;  venture- 
some doubt  will  face  either  exactly  alike  ;  while 
clear  faith  knows  no  more  of-  the  one  horror  than  of 
the  other. 

ORTHODOX     TEACHING     STIGMATIZED. 

Mr.  Constable  uses  great  vigor  and  courage  in 
his  denial  of  the  orthodox  theory  of  hell.  He 
says:  "We  abhor  Augustine's  theory."  He 
speaks  of  the  arguments  used  in  its  support  as 
"  arguments  which  we  feel  unworthy  of  a  child." 
The  course  which  it  ascribes  to  God  he  denounces 
as  a  "  procedure  which  our  heart  whispers  to  us 
is  only  worthy  of  hell."  He  stigmatizes  the  or- 
thodox teaching  of  Augustine  on  the  subject  as 
"  Semi-Manichaeism,"  and  pronounces  it  "  at  di- 
rect issue  with,  the  authority  of  Scripture."  He 
declares  that  "the  theory  of  eternal  life  in  hell 
contradicts  the  whole  tenor  of  the  Bible."  Speak- 
ing of  those  who  l(  sinned  without  law,"  he  says 
that  "  Augustine's  sentence  against  such  is  one  of 
the  blackest  tyranny  and  injustice."  The  idea 
that  all  souls  are  immortal  has,  he  asserts,  "  led 
good  men,  under  the  specious  pretext  of  exhibit- 
ing the  Divine  justice  and  holiness  as  infinite,  to 


56  THE  QUESTION  OF  HELL. 

paint  God  as  a  monster  of  unutterable  cruelty." 

A    SPECIOUS     PRETEXT. 

For  a  confession  from  the  bosom  of  orthodoxy 
this  is  surprisingly  exact.  The  last  sentence  just 
quoted  touches  the  quick  of  the  orthodox  argu- 
ment. The  plea  for  hell  in  orthodox  dogmatism 
is  indeed  based  on  the  "  specious  pretext  of  ex- 
hibiting the  DivinS  justice  and  holiness."  It  is  a 
mere  pretext.  No  man,  directly  anxious  to  honor 
the  justice  and  holiness  of  God,  will  turn  his  mind 
to  the  damnation  of  other  people  as  a  means  there- 
to. He  may  leave  himself  in  the  hands  of  God, 
for  better  or  for  worse  ;  and  he  will  do  so  rather 
than  make.it  his  first  business  to  find  some  means 
of  escape  from  the  Divine  discipline. 

SIMPLE    SUBMISSION    ALONE    HONORS    GOD. 

If  the  soul  awakened  to  desire  the  glory  of 
God,  and  moved  to  faith  in  him,  seems  to  itself 
worthy  of  hell,  it  will  say  so  submissively,  and 
leave  the  matter  entirely  to  God.  If  redemption 
comes  to  such  a  soul,  it  will  come  of  the  free  grace 
of  God,  not  through  any  scheme  of  begging  off 
and  paying  up  and  getting  quit,  either  with  or 
without  intervention  of  a  second  party.  To  set 
the  soul  upon  pushing  its  part  in  any  such  scheme, 
as  if  loyalty  to  God  could  be  shown  by  concern 


I  HE  QUESTION  OF  HELL.  $7 

for  one's  own  safety,  and  it  were  honor  enough  to 
God  to  let  us  off,  on  the  basis  of  a  good  scheme,  is 
absurdly  contrary  to  a  just  idea  of  regard  for  the 
character  of  Deity.  If  we  honestly  desire  honor 
to  the  Divine  justice  and  holiness,  we  have  no 
choice  but  to  submit  ourselves  absolutely,  trusting 
that  God  cannot  do  wrong,  not  even  to  a  sinner, 
and  willing  that  he  should  do  right,  though  he 
slay  us. 

THE    ORTHODOX    SCHEME    NO    HONOR    TO    GOD. 

The  theory,  therefore,  which  affects  to  honor 
God  by  according  to  him  the  right  to  inflict  the 
pains  of  hell,  provided  that  we  may  in  good  time 
dodge  the  infliction,  has  no  rectitude  or  veracity  in 
it  ;  it  is  a  trick  of  human  conceit  and  selfishness, 
as  mere  a  pretext  as  ever  superstition  suggested  to 
the  mind  of  man.  Any  sincere  mind,  once  brought 
round  from  the  orthodox  to  the  Christian  point  of 
view,  from  selfish  fear  to  unselfish  faith,  will  see 
this  without  difficulty.  It,  is  remarkable  that  Mr. 
Constable  should  see  it  while  still  holding  on  to  a 
modified  orthodoxy. 

A    PEDIGREE    OF    DISHONOR. 

In  disposing  of  the  orthodox  dogma  of  hell, 
Mr.  Constable  looks  up  its  historical  appearance 
On  this  point  he  remarks  : 


68  THE  QUESTION  OF  HELL. 

11  The  first  known  holder  of  the  theory  of  eternal  life  for 
the  reprobate  was  the  author  of  the  writings  known  under 
the  title  of  '  Clementina,'  and  falsely  attributed  to  Clemens 
Romanus.  ....  This  namelesa  forger  Is,  so  far  as  is 
known,  the  first  inaintainer  of  the  doctrine  of  eternal  life 
in  hell.  .  .  Here  in  these  shameless  forgeries,  and  these 
vagaries  of  unhallowed  fancy,  lies  the  mean  ofigin  of  a  dog- 
ma which,  now  overshadows  the  Christian  Church. 

"UNHALLOWED"  AND  "SHAMELESS.** 

We  need  not  pause  to  weigh  the  historical  value 
of  this  statement.  It  is  sufficient  to  consider  its 
significance  as  a  confession.  The  author  of  it  is 
in  full  sympathy  with  the  dogmatic  system  of  or- 
thodoxy, except  on  the  one  point  of  the  duration 
and  nature  of  future  punishment.  He  rests  his 
faith  on  Scripture  alone,  and  he  shrinks  with  hor- 
ror from  any  really  liberal  conception  of  dealing 
with  sin.  In  fact  he  thinks  his  notion  of  hell 
more  terribly  effective  than  any  other.  He  thinks 
that  he  believes  that  we  should  have  universal 
Sodom  within  one  generation  if  the  fear  of  hell 
were  removed.  There  is  no  liberal  taint  in  his 
pietism.  He  has  simply  hit  upon  a  particular  in- 
terpretation of  sacred  texts,  and  he  pushes  this 
with  precisely  the  average  dogmatic  spirit.  As 
near  as  possible,  therefore,  he  is  a  witness  from  the 
midst  of  orthodoxy.  And  the  ability,  dignity,  and 
learning  with  which  he  writes,  assure  us  that  he 
is  more  than  a  common  witness.  When  then  he 


THE  QUESTION  OF  HELL.  59 

tells  us  that  vagaries  of  unhallowed  iancy,  dis- 
guised in  shameless  forgeries,  were  the  origin  of  a 
doctrine  which  now  overshadows,  and  which  for 
more  than  fifteen  hundred  years  has  overshadowed, 
the  Christian  Church,  we  may  very  properly  re- 
gard so  damaging  a  statement  as  a  grave  additional 
reason  for  pushing  from  us  the  whole  structure  of 
orthodox  dogmatism,  and  for  resting  in  the  simple 
faith  and  practice  of  Christian  principle?.  The 
mere  possibility  that  such  a  thing  has  happened, 
through  excess  of  human  opinion  in  Christian  the- 
ology, should  send  us  back  to  the  simplest  faith. 

THE    SHAME    UNDENIABLE. 

We  are  born  under  a  vast  dogmatic  system  ;  ed- 
ucation and  custom  press  it  upon  us  ;  persuasion 
and  persecution  hold  us  back  from  going  out  of  it ; 
and,  behold,  a  credible  witness,  who  has  no  hostile 
motive,  who  wishes  only  a  slight  readjustment  of  a 
single  conception,  breaks  out  with  the  declaration 
that  the  conception  which  he  wishes  to  displace 
was  the  invention  of  unhallowed  fancy,  and  was 
originally  palmed  upon  the  church  by  a  shameless 
forger.  Can  an  indignant  church  reply,  not 
merely  that  it  was  not  so  in  this  case,  but  that  it 
could  not  have  been  so  ?  Alas  for  a  Church  which 
certainly  cannot  so  reply,  and  to  which  no  candid 
scholar  can  give  credit  in  such  a  matter  without  go- 


60  THE  QUESTION  OF  HELL. 

ing  into  court,  and  hearing  unquestioned  evidence. 
And  when  all  the  evidence  is  heard,  we  fear  that  it 
will  only  show  to  what  an  enormous  extent  the  au- 
thoritative dogmas  of  Christendom  are  an  in- 
trusion and  a  fraud  upon  Christian  faith. 

HORRID    FEATURES    OF    THE    DOGMA    OF     HELL. 

That  Mr.  Constable,  once  able  to  stand  back 
from  the  dogma  of  eternal  torture  of  souls,  and  to 
take  in  all  its  hideous  aspects,  regards  it  as  an  out- 
rage upon  every  humane  and  godly  instinct  of  ra- 
tional man,  is  made  very  plain  in  the  following 
vigorous  statement  : 

"  What  is  our  question  ?  It  is  this.  Is  pain,  inflicted 
through  eternity,  endured  without  any  hope  of  an  end,  no 
nearer  to  its  close  when  numberless  cycles  have  passed  than 
when  the  first  groan  was  uttered, — is  such  a  just  punishment 
for  any  conceivable  amount  of  sin  committed  by  the  worst  of 
men?  Man  did  not  ask  for  life:  it  was  given  him  without 
his  knowledge  or  consent.  Can  any  abuse  of  this  uuasked- 
for  gift  justify  the  recompense  of  an  existence  spent  in  un- 
ending agony  ? 

"  We  must  put  the  question  on  its  proper  grounds.  The 
ablest  modern  defenders  of  eternal  life  in  hell  have  put  it  on 
a  false  issue.  They  have  done  so  in  two  main  respects,  urged 
on  by  their  inability  to  justify  their  theory  in  its  naked  light. 
The  first  of  these  we  will  give  in  the  words  of  William 
Archer  Butler,  whcse  view  is  adopted  by  Dr.  Salmon,  Pro 
fessor  Mansel,  and  others.  '  The  punishments  of  hell,1  says 
Butler, '  are  but  the  perpetual  vengeance  that  accompanies 
the  siim  of  hell,  An  eternity  of  wickedness  brings  with  it  an 
eternity  of  woe.  The  sinner  is  to  suffer  for  everlasting,  but 
it  is  because  the  sin  itself  is  as  everlasting  as  the  sufferintjS 

"It  may  fairly  be  questioned  whether,  according  to  any  prin- 
ciples of  Divine  or  human  law,  the  lost  in  hell  are  capable  of 
sinning.  We  do  not  believe  they  are.  Out  of  and  beyond  all 


THE  QUESTION  Ol<  HELL.  01 

law,  they  arc  incapable  of  transgressing  law.  But  independ- 
ently of  this,  it  is  sufficient  to  say  of  the  above  fearful  view 
that  it  contradicts  the  Scriptures.  Not  once  or  twice,  but 
over  and  over  again,  it  tells  us  that  the  punishment  of  the  future 
is  for  the  sins  of  the  present  times.  If  we  think  it  too  great,  we 
are  not  at  liberty  to  throw  in  the  sins  of  the  future,  real  or 
imaginary,  to  justify  the  punishment  of  the  future.  If  we 
cannot  defend  man's  future  treatment  as  being  a  just  award 
for  his  present  conduct,  we  cannot  justify  it  at  ail.  It  is  a 
piece  of  the  coolest  effrontery  for  us  to  present  as  a  reason 
for  God's  conduct  what  God  has  not  Himself  presented  when 
explaining  to  man  His  judicial  conduct.  Just  fancy  an  earthly 
judge  sentencing  a  criminal  to  a  punishment  too  severe  for  the 
offense  committed,  and  then  gravely  justifying  his  sentence 
by  the  observation  that  the  criminal  would  be  sure  to  deserve  it 
all  by  his  conduct  in  gaol!  Yet  such  is  the  judicature,  unwor- 
thy of  a  Jeffreys,  which  learned  professors  of  theology  and 
doctors  of  divinity  ascribe  to  the  Judge  of  the  whole  earth  ! 

"  Nor  does  it  relieve  God  in  the  smallest  measure  from  the 
charge  of  injustice  to  say  that  future  punishment  will  but 
follow  that  law  of  nature  which  inextricably  links  together 
sin  and  misery.  The  laws  of  nature  are  the  laws  of  God. 
For  all  their  consequences,  after  they  have  worked  their  uni- 
form work  for  ages,  lie  is  just  as  responsible  as  when  He  first 
ordained  them,  or  as  when  He  departs  trom  them  by  an  alter- 
ation of  law  or  a  miraculous  interference.  So  Bishop  Butler 
argues  in  the  place  above  referred  to.  If  the  laws  of  nature 
were  to  bring  on  the  sinner  a  punishment  greater  than  his 
sin  deserved,  it  is  God  Himself  who  would  be  doing  so. 

"  The  simple  question  then  is,  could  man  by  any  conduct 
here  deserve  to  suffer  throughout  eternity  pain  and  torment 
to  which  only  the  worst  pain  he  suffers  here  can  afford  a  true 
parallel  ?  Would  the  agonies  to  which  the  martyr  was  sub- 
jected for  an  hour  be  only  sufficient  for  the  sinner  if  drawn 
out  through  the  eternal  age  ?  Would  it  be  just  in  God  to  in- 
flict this  on  any  single  creature  of  his  hand,  on  any  being 
who  would  never  have  had  life  at  all  if  the  Maker  had  not 
called  him  from  his  clay  ?  The  verdict  of  the  human  Heart 
— in  its  fierce  denial — in  its  secret  recoil — answers  No. 
'  Eternal  pain,'  says  Augustine,  '  seems  harsh  and  unjust  to 
human  sense.'  l  With  the  majority  of  men  of  the  world,' 
says  Butler,  '  this  doctrine  seems,  when  they  think  at  all  about 
it,  monstrous,  disproportioned,  impossible.'  It  seems  so,  in 
the  same  writer's  mind,  to  others  besides  men  of  the  world,' 


62  THE  QUEST.  ION  OF  HELL. 

to  men  who  do  not  fear  this  doom  foi  themselves  ;  '  it  would 
blanch  the  intellect,'  reduce  the  mind  of  the  Christian  to  a 
state  of  idiotcy,  deprive  him  of  life  weie  he  but  '  adequately 
to  conceive  it.  If  God  were  now  to  ask  man  whether  his 
conduct  on  this  hypothesis  were  just,  man  would  with  one 
Toice  reply  that  it  was  not. 

"The  history  of  human  religious  thought  shows  man's  inera- 
dicable sense  of  the  burning  wrong  of  this  fearful  theory.  It' 
Plato,  deriving  hia  inspiration  from  Egypt,  taught  a  Tartarus 
with  its  fiery  streams  whence  none  could  come  forth,  he 
taught  it  for  an  infinitesimally  small  portion  of  men.     For 
most — even  for  the  homicide,  the  parricide,  and  the  matri- 
cide— he  had  his  Acherusian  Lake,  whence,  after  a  purgative- 
process,  they  issued  forth  again  to  the  upper  air.     If  Augus- 
tine adopted  his  great  master's  abode  of  unending  pain,  he 
adopted  also  hi3  purgatory,  from  whence  there  was  a  way  to 
heaven.    If  the  Church  of  Home  has  sanctioned  the  theory 
of  Augustine,  she  practically  holds  out  its  terrors  only  to 
those  without  her  pale  of  safety :  for  her  own  millions  she 
has,  at  the  worst,  the  fires  of  a  finite  period.     The  assertion 
of  Augustine's  hell  did  but  drive  the  gentler  mind  of  Qrigen 
to  the  notion  of  a  wider  purgatory  than  Rome's  or  Augus- 
tine's, where  even  devils  should  be  prepared  to  resume  their 
place  in  heaven.     The  Churches  of  the  Reformation  have 
generally  followed  Augustine  in  his  hell  and  denied  his  pur- 
gatory, but  at  all  times  within  their  bosom  has  been  a  strug- 
gle against  the  dominant  doctrine,  and,  even  from  those  who 
maintained  it,  it  has  generally  commanded  only  a  sullen,  un- 
cheerf  ul  assent.     Such  men  a's  Tillotson,  Robert  Hall,  Isaak 
Taylor,  Albert  Barnes,  while  they  accepted  the  theory,  loved 
it  not.     We  constantly  find  its  recent  defenders  candidly 
confessing  that    with    all    their    heart    they    would    wish 
that  it  was  a    lie.      The    modern    mind,    shaken    in    reli- 
gious   faith,    denies  the  inspiration    of    a  book    which    is 
supposed  to  teach  the  monstrous  creed.     With  those  who 
will    not   throw    away    their   faith    in    man's    future,    the 
theory  of  Origen,  with  all  its  consequences,  bids  fair,  if  only 
confronted  with  the  fearful  nightmare  of  Augustine,  to  take 
the  plase  which  the  authority  of  the  latter  father  has  given 
to  his  views.    The  modern  defenders  of  Augustine's  theory 
shrink  from  putting  forward  a  vindication  of  it  in  its  plain 
and  hideous  aspect.     One  after  another  of  the  arguments  on 
which  it  has  heretofore  been  defended  they  have  abandoned 
as  unworthy  of  their  reason,  or  abhorrent  to  their  sense  of 
justice." 


THE  q  UEST10N  OF  HELL.  03 

"Hell  ii  not  the  eternal  abode  of  evil,  concentrated  in  in- 
tensity, deepening  and  darkening  in  line  throughout  eternity. 
It  is  not  the  everlasting  exhibition  of  a  scene  with  whose 
moral  horrors  all  the  sensuality,  and  deviltry,  and  hate,  and 
despair  that  has  been  exhibited  in  earth's  foulest  dens  could 
not  compare.  .  .  .  Thank  God,  it  is  not  true.  God  does 
not  contemplate  this  hell. 

''The  hell  of  Scripture  is  the  very  counterpart  to  that  fearful 
scene  which  Augustine  has  depicted.  The  very  thought  of 
this  latter  is  too  horrible  to  think.  However  ancient,  it  is  no 
part  of  '  the  failh  once  delivered  to  the  saints.'  We  therefore 
reject  it  as  a  fable,  a  novelty,  a  monstrous  doctrine  worthy  of 
the  Koran,  where  it  takes  its  fitting  place — unworthy  of  the 
Gospel,  where  it  finds  no  place.  We  leave  it  to  the  disciple 
of  Mohammed,  lying  on  his  couch  of  sensuality,  to  look 
down  with  cruel  delight  upon  a  scene  of  unutterable  and  end- 
less misery.  This  is  not  the  consummation  which  the  disci- 
ples of  Christ,  or  the  worshippers  of  the  Father  of  mercies 
are  called  on  to  rejoice  in.  They  could  not  look  on  it  and 
rejoice  ;  they  could  not  regard  pain  as  endless  without  feel- 
ing that  unalloyed  joy  could  never  be  their  «wn." — pp.  G5,  C6. 


HELL  A  MORAL  HORROR. 

It  is  quite  just  to  leave  the  expectation  of  hell 
to  the  most  utterly  sensual,  or  the  most  thoroughly^ 
selfish  of  moral  creatures.  The  dogma  belongs  in 
the  lowest  and  basest  types  of  religion.  No  de- 
cently moral  nature  can  contemplate  the  merest 
chance  of  such  a  gathering  into  one  of  vile  energies 
and  detestable  horrors  without  feeling  unutterably 
moved  to  resist  it,  to  overcome  it,  to  suppress  and 
exterminate  it.  People  may  well  be  shy  of  arguing 
for  hell  in  clear  and  cool  reason,  apart  from  the 
heat  of  dogmatism,  or  the  blindness  of  supersti- 
tion. Undoubtedly  the  mere  progress  of  virtue, 


04  THE  QUESTION  OF  HELL. 

the  most  ordinary  experience  of  elevation  of  char- 
acter, is  blotting  out  faith  in  the  plague  of  eternal 
woe,  and  preparing  the  way  of  a  distinctly  con- 
trary doctrine.  There  is  no  authority  which  can 
long  stand  up  against  this  irrepressible  moral  ad- 
vance of  Christian  mankind.  If  the  Bible  teaches 
the  dogma  of  hell,  faith  will  be  thereby  convinced 
that  it  is  not  the  book  which  is  divine,  but  the 
word  of  holy  truth  which  the  book  may  prove  to 
contain.  An  inveterate  divinity  in  every  good 
man's  heart  forbids,  as  with  the  voice  of  indwell- 
ing God,  the  admission  of  the  hateful  doctrine  into 
the  holier  place  of  the  heart,  where  love  dwelleth  ; 
nay  more  than  this,  decent  human  instinct  keeps 
it,  like  a  leper,  at  a  distance.  The  more  souls 
grow  into  the  likeness  of  God,  the  more  they  grow 
away  from  this  looking  for  of  poison  and  fire  and 
all  hell  torment. 

THE    PROTESTANT    DOGMA    WORSE    THAN  THE  CATH- 
OLIC. 

It  is  something  astonishing  that  the  Protestant 
dogma  should  be  so  much  harder  and  blacker  than 
the  Catholic.  Perhaps  it  is  chiefly  due  to  the  fact 
that  Protestantism  is  really  a  bolder  departure 
from  living  inspiration  than  Catholicism  is.  The 
latter  possesses  a  respectable  faith  in  the  presence 
of  deity  in  a  general  communion  of  mankind, 


THE  Q  VESTION  OF  HELL.  65 

though  it  falsely  limits  this  communion  to  her  own 
mankind.  Protestantism  is  a  long  way  more  ex- 
clusive and  Pharisaic  than  the  olderform  of  churck 
and  creed.  She  thanks  God  that  none  of  her  chil- 
dren are  as  other  men  are,  while  Home  uses  the 
Christian  rule  far  more  thoroughly,  and  receives 
into  her  fold,  not  those  who  are  already  Christian, 
but  all  who  are  willing  to  come  to  her  to  be  made 
Christian.  If  God  does  as  well  by  his  children  as 
Rome  by  hers,  then  is  no  soul  shut  out  from  hope. 

BOTTOMLESS    EVIL     IMPOSSIBLE     IX    A     MORAL     UNI- 
VERSE. 

This  is  a  true  paternal  as  well  as  maternal  in- 
stinct, to  hold  on  to  all,  with  courage  and  hope  to 
recover  all.  The  purging  away  of  evil  belongs  in 
a  just  conception  of  discipline.  No  philosophy  of 
the  universe  is  so  much  as  respectable  which  does 
not  lend  to  divine  law  this  disciplinary  efficacy. 
Right  and  wrong  would  cease  to  mean  anything  if 
we  should  once  really  apprehend  a  tide  of  uncon- 
trolled wrong  setting  forever  towards  a  gulf  of 
bottomless  evil.  Right  is  the  way  the  divine  law 
makes  things  go,  and  if  it  makes  things  go  wrong, 
then  is  wrong  right,  and  our  philosophy  is  crazy. 
Crazy  !  It  would  be  hell  itself  to  really  know  of 
hell,  or  adequately  to  conceive  the  horrors  of  per- 
dition. 


66  THE  QITE&1ION  OF  HELL. 

A    THEOLOGICAL     WHOPPER. 

God  speaks  conclusively  in  the  breast  of  man  to 
give  the  lie  direct  to  all  assertion  of  horrible  tor- 
ture in  the  universe.  If  such  were  the  effect  of 
Godhead  working  through  natural  law,  then  were 
it  better  that  unpitying  force  be  our  mother,  for 
this  at  least  is  not  positively  malignant,  does  not 
poison  the  wound  as  well  as  crush.  Earth  has 
never  seen  judgment  such  as  the  orthodox  dogma 
ascribes  to  God  ;  to  speak  of  it  as  based  in  jus- 
tice, this  exceeding  weight  of  horrible  injury, 
which  will  never  let  up  to  all  eternity,  is  truly  a 
theological  whopper. 

A    WICKED     PROPHECY. 

No  wonder  that  the  dogmatists  are  anxious  to 
turn  prophets,  and  to  tell  us  what  they  know  about 
the  eternal  future  occupation  of  those  who  have 
not  here  found  life.  They  bear  down  with  great 
confidence  on  this  point,  the  apparent  certainty 
that  souls  once  swallowed  up  of  sin  will  go  on  sin- 
sing  forever,  and  will  only  get  the  deserts  of  eternal 
sinning.  Such  prophecy  is  a  crime,  a  blasphemy, 
a  deep  ungodliness  and  horrible  infidelity.  By  it, 
if  we  venture  it,  we  consent  to  the  going  on  for- 
ever of  wickedness,  and  are  really  in  an  attitude  to 
desire  that  this  may  be.  We  deny,  also,  in  this 


THE  QUESTION  OF  HELL.  67 

vaticination,  the  efficient  control  of  God,  the  infi- 
nite persuasion  of  divine  moral  government,  the 
just  certainties  of  law  and  order  in  the  universe. 
There  is  no  unbelief  so  deep,  so  godless,  so  faithless, 
so  profane  and  mad,  as  that  which  says  to  the  des- 
perate sinner,  the  outrageous  wrong-doer,  the 
hardened  wretch,  there  is  no  effectual  remedy  of 
divine  discipline,  no  ample  restoration  of  injury, 
no  perfect  bringing  to  rights  again,  no  insurance  of 
good  against  evil  which  ivill  be  paid. 

SUPREME    DEITY    IS    SUPREME    RESPONSIBILITY. 

Not  only  have  we  been  cast  on  this  stream  of 
existence  without  wish  or  will  of  our  own,  but  all 
the  chief  conditions  of  our  career  have  been  so  far 
ordered  that  for  nothing  whatever  can  we  be  held 
alone  responsible.  There  is  no  moment  of  creature 
existence  without  the  finger  of  God,  no  incident  or 
accident  of  man  without  the  effectual  providence 
of  the  Divine  Father.  Neither  in  creating  us  with 
mind,  nor  in  placing  us  under  freedom,  has  Deity 
abrogated  Godhead,  the  core  of  which  is  living 
law,  and  the  necessity  of  which  is  the  living  con- 
trol, the  spiritual  subjection,  of  all  things  that 
are. 

FREE    WILL    CANNOT    BAR    GOD'S    WILL. 

If  we  do  not  see  how  to  have  this  faith  in  God 
without  a  sacrifice  of  our  notion  of  human  free- 


68  THE  %  UESTION  OF  HELL. 

dom,  we  must  make  the  Christian  choice,  not  the 
heathen,  and  keep  our  faith  whatever  may  become 
of  our  notion  of  free  will.  It  is  of  no  importance 
that  we  find  out  how  the  Lord  works  to  will  and 
to  do  ;  it  is  only  necessary  to  believe  that  he  does, 
and  to  make  that  belief  an  integral  part  of  our 
own  devotion  to  the  divine  service.  No  more  here 
than  anywhere  else  is  the  speculative  belief  of  any 
value  without  the  practical  doing  going  before  and 
following  after  ;  so  that  even  the  belief  becomes 
the  worst  of  lies  if  we  make  it  mean  that  deity  is 
dead  fate,  and  that  we  have  only  to  let  all  go  as  it 
will,  without  care  or  conscience  of  ours.  It  is  the 
intimate  union  of  divine  purpose  with  human,  of 
our  working  with  God's,  which  Christian  iaith  pro- 
claims to  us  on  the  part  of  the  Divine  Father,  and 
demands  from  us  as  the  Father' s  children.  To  set 
free  will  apart  from  God,  and  to  make  divine  will 
fate  irrespective  of  man,  are  alike  contrary,  the  one 
to  fidelity,  and  the  other  to  trust,  towards  the 
Father  in  heaven. 

TERTULLIAN    AND    THE    DOGMA    OF     HELL. 

The  greatest  early  master  of  the  dogma  of  eter- 
nal torture  of  souls  was.  the  African  Latin  Father, 
Tertullian,  whom  a  candid  history  of  the  rise  of 
orthodoxy  will  show  to  have  been  a  heathen  rhetor- 
ician still,  in  the  Christian  church,  as  well  as  bo- 


rlUE  QUESTION  OF  HELL.  G9 

fore  he  was  converted.  Tertullian,  as  godfather  to 
the  intrusive  diabolism  of  the  dogma  of  hell,  has 
become  sufficiently  hateful  to  Mr.  Constable,  now 
that  his  dogmatic  motive  is  changed  from  damna- 
tion which  lasts  forever  to  that  which  burns  out  by 
burning  everything  up.  Thus  he  says  of  the  pa- 
ternity of  the  orthodox  view,  and  of  its  character  : 

"  In  Athenagoras,  Tatian,  and  the  \vriter  of  the  spurious 
works  attributed  to  Clemens  Komanus,  A\e  have  then  the  earli- 
est known  advocates  of  the  theory  of  eternal  life  in  hell.  But 
this  theory  required  a  more  powerful  advocate  than  any  of 
the  above  writers,  and  it  found  it  somewhat  later  in  the  per- 
son of  Tertullian.  A  master  of  the  Latin  tongue,  a  powerful 
reasoner  when  not  led  away  by  his  peculiar  errors,  of  a  vehe- 
ment nature  and  a  vivid  imagination,  he  was  well  suited  to 
impress  an  idea  on  an  age  disposed  to  accept  it,  and,  spito  of 
his  heresies,  spite  of  his  strange  hallucinations,  he  left  the 
lasting  impression  of  his  mind  upon  the  church  of  succeeding 
times.  He  uses  to  their  utmost  possible  latitude'  of  meaning 
most  of  Plato's  terms  for  the  soul.  It  is,  even  in  the  case  of 
the  wicked,  not  subject  to  death,  but  must  ever  continue  im- 
mortal. It  is  ever  indissoluble,  indivisible,  an  eternal  sub- 
stance, having  the  very  same  immortality  "which  belongs  to 
Deily.  But  it  is  in  the  description  of  the  endless  agony  of 
the  lost  that  Tertullian  surpassed  his  predecessors,  and  threw 
them  into  the  shade.  He  does  not  draw  any  discreet  veil  over 
his  scene  of  punishment.  Without  sa_^  ing  that  he  took  a 
positive  delight  in  the  contemplation  of  it,  he  depicts  its  fan- 
cied circumstances  with  a  minuteness  and  a  force  that  have 
only  been  surpassed  by  the  imagination  of  a  Dante,  or  the 
agonizing  details  of  a  Jesuit  or  a  Redemptorist  preacher. 
Nor  can  we  say  that  ho  was  wrong,  if  his  theory  were  but 
true.  No  amount  of  terror,  horror,  disgust,  that  could  pos- 
sibly be  awakened  here  in  the  human  mind  could  be  too 
great,  if  only  by  it  a  single  soul  could  be  persuaded  to  fly  in 
time  from  this  wrath  to  come.  The  delicacy  that  tells  us  that 
there  is  such  a  hell,  but  that  good  manners,  or  regard  for  feel- 
ing, should  lead  us  to  conceal  its  naked  and  terrible  aspect,  is 
a  talse  delicacy  which  risks  eternity  rather  than  give  pain  for 


fo  THE  QUE8IION  OF  HULL. 

a  moment.  Tertullian  certainly  was  not  guilty  of  this  fnlsc 
delicacy.  lie  believed  in  eternal  torments,  and  lie  drew  faith- 
ful pictures  of  them.  With  him  hell  was  a  scene  where  end- 
less slaughtering  (celerna  occisio)  was  being  enacted,  where 
the  pain  of  dying  was  to  be  ever  felt,  but  never  the  relief 
which  death  could  bring,  for  death  according  to  him  could 
not  enter  into  that  region  of  endless  life.  And  God  was  the  ' 
author  and  inflictor  of  this  ! " 

DIABOLISM    OF    TEllTULLIAN's   DOGMA 

Mr.  Constable  continues  : 

"  Let  us  look  fairly  and  boldly  at  this.  It  was  the  root, 
and  basis,  and.  justification  of  the  theory  of  Origen.  No  man 
can  deny  that  God  is  able  to  destroy  what  He  was  able  to 
create.  No  man  can  deny  that  God  had  a  power  to  choose 
whether  He  would  inflict  death  upon  the  sinner  or  an  endless 
life  of  agonjr.  Which  would  He  choose— the  gentler  or  the 
more  fearful  doom  ?  Will  you  say  the  latter  ?  Why  ?  There 
must  be  a  reason.  Is  it  to  please  Himself  ?  He  repudiates 
wholly  this  kind  of  character  !  His  mode  of  dealing  here 
contradicts  it ;  where  pain  is  sharp  it  is  short.  Is  it  to  please 
his  angelic  or-  redeemed  creation  ?  They  are  too  like  himself 
to  take  pleasure  in  such  a  course.  Did  no  pity  visit  the  Crea- 
tor's bosom,  they  would  look  up  into  his  fare  and  plead  for 
mercy.  Is  it  to  terrify  them  from  sin  ?  Would  it  ?  Whnt  is 
sin?  Is  it  not  pre-eminently  alienation  from  God?  What 
would  alienate  from  Him  so  completely  as  the  sight  or  the 
knowledge  of  such  a  hell  as  Tertullian  taught  ?  P.ty,  horror, 
anguish,  would  invade  every  celestial  breast.  Just  fancy  a 
criminal  with  us.  He  has  been  a  great  criminal.  Let  him 
be  the  cruel  murderer  ;  the  base  destroyer  of  woman's  inno- 
cense  and  honor ;  the  fiendish  trafficker  in  the  market  of  lust  ; 
the  cold-blooded  plotter  for  the  widow's  or  the  orphan's  in- 
heritance. Let  him  be  the  vilest  of  the  vile,  on  whose  head 
curses  loud  and  deep  have  been  heaped.  He  is  taken  by  the 
hand  of  justice.  All  rejoice.  lie  is  put  to  death !  No. 
That  is  thought  too  light  a  punishment  by  the  ruler  of  the 
land.  He  is  put  into  a  dungeon  ;  deprived  of  all  but  the  nec- 
essaries of  existence  ;  tortured  by  day  and  by  night ;  guard- 
ed lest  his  own  hand  should  rid  him  of  a  miserable 
life  ;  and  this  is  to  go  on  till  nature  thrusts  within  the  prison 
.  bars  an  irresistible  hand,  and  frees  the  wretch  from  his  exist- 


THE  qUEMION  0V  HELL.  71 


ence.  Now  what  would  be  the  effect  upon  the  community  of 
such  a  course  ?  The  joy  at  the  criminal's  overthrow,  once 
universal,  would  rapidly  change  into  pity,  into  indignation, 
into  horror,  into  the  wild  uprising  of  an  outraged  nation  to 
rescue  the  miserable  man  from  a  tyrant,  and  to  hurl  the  infa- 
mous abuser  of  law  and  power  from  his  seat.  And  this  is  but 
the  faintest  image  of  what  a  cruel  theology  would  have  us  to 
believe  of  God  !  Nature  steps  in,  in  the  one  case,  and  says 
there  shall  be  an  end.  Omnipotence  in  the  other  puts  forth 
its  might  to  stay  all  such  escapes.  Forever  and  forever  !  Mil- 
lions of  years  of  torment  gone,  and  yet  torment  no  nearer  to  its 
close  !  Not  one,  but  mryiadd  to  suffer  thus  !  Their  endless 
cries  !  Their  ceaseless  groans  !  Their  interminable  despair  t 
"Why  Heaven  and  Earth  and  Stars  in  their  infinite  number  — 
all  worlds  that  roll  through  the  great  Creator's  space  —  would 
raise  one  universal  shout  of  horror  at  such  a  course.  Love 
for  God  would  give  way  to  hatred.  Apostacy  would  no 
longer  be  partial  but  universal.  All  would  stand  aloof  in  ir- 
repressible loathing  from  the  tyrant  on  the  throne,  for  a 
worse  thing  than  Manichseism  pictured  would  be  seated  there 
—  the  One  Eternal  Principle  icouldbe  the  Principle  of  Evil." 

EVIL    NOT    AN    ETERNAL    PRINCIPLE. 

It  does  certainly  seem  a  very  direct  and  simple 
conclusion  that  if  the  life  of  the  creatures  is  only 
evil  it  must  be  because  4he  creator  is  an  eternal 
Principle  of  Evil.  If  that  life  is  in  part  good,  it 
will  be  from  the  life  of  God  in  the  soul,  and  this 
divine  cannot  but  prevail  over  that  human.  If 
there  be  even  one  dead  and  damned  soul,  and  eter- 
nally lost  spirit,  we  must  see  in  that  single  ruin 
even,  that  God  lacks  Godhtad,  and  is  himself 
tainted  with  evil.  If  there  be  no  spiritual  quick 
to  the  creative  and  sustaining  energy,  no  divinity 
of  eternal  life  in  the  power  which  upholds  exist- 
ence, then  is  it  idle  for  us  to  inquire  after  God. 


72  THE  QUESTION  01  HELL. 

GODHEAD    NOT    ABORTIVE. 

And  so  sure  as  there  is  the  force  of  deity  in 
whatever  beings  exist,  so  sure  must  it  be  that  this 
force  will  strive  against  sin  as  long  as  sin  does  not 
yield,  and  that  to  this  struggle  there  can  be  only 
an  end  worthy  of  the  power  and  wisdom  of  Grod- 
head.  Any  result  other  than  the  cure  of  evil  by 
the  greater  divinity  of  good,  would  be  a  root  of 
bitterness  and  poison  of  fear  to  all  created  being. 
A  hell  full  of  cinders  even,  which  is  the  hope  set 
before  us  by  Mr.  Constable's  confident  and  cheerful 
variation  from  orthodoxy,  would  penetrate  with 
horror  the  very  core  of  creature  existence,  and 
deepen  fear  to  hatred,  and  hatred  to  madness,  as 
far  as  ever  the  thought  of  such  divine  abortion 
should  come. 

THE    CURE    OF    EVIL    ESPECIALLY    DIVINE. 

The  one  thing  which  is  divine  on  earth  is  the 
cure  of  evil — help  for  fault,  deficiency,  infirmity, 
sin  and  shame,  and  the  one  assurance  of  heaven  is 
infinite  help  for  souls,  infinite  cure  of  evil,  in  the 
natural  force  of  divinity  in  the  creation.  The  purest 
and  largest  human*  sympathy  goes  increasingly 
in  this  direction;  this  is  the  leaven,  which  may 
be  seen  pure  in  the  "Our  Father"  and  the  com- 
mandment of  perfect  love  after  the  manner  of  Our 
Father  in  Heaven,  and  which  has  been  a  lively 


THE  QUESTION  OF  HELL.  73 

presence  of  divinity  in  the  mass  of  historical  Chris- 
tianity, long  hid,  yet  effectual  to  establish  under 
the  thick  darkness  of  the  world  the  irrepressible 
light  and  life  of  God  with  us. 

TERTULLIAN'S  PICTURE  HEATHEN. 

The  picture  which  Tertullian  drew,  of  the  tor- 
ment of  souls  under  the  consuming  preservatives 
of  the  divine  wrath,  was  composed  by  a  heathen 
hand,  from  heathen  colors,  and  commended  to 
heathen  eyes — eyes  not  yet  annointed  by  the  spirit 
and  life  which  are  the  grace  and  truth  of  Christ. 
To  continue  that  picture  in  Christian  use  to-day, 
or  to  permit  even  the  smooch  of  the  faded  canvas 
to  offend  Christian  sight,  bespeaks  a  persistency 
of  tradition,  and  a  weakness  of  the  consciousness 
of  inspiration,  which  ought  not  to  be. 

THE  LAST  MOMENTS  OF  HELL. 

But  the  end  of  this  draws  very  nigh  ;  the  Chris- 
tian heart  is  too  full  of  light,  too  profound  in  the 
love  of  God,  too  quick  with  humane  justice,  and 
too  powerful  in  tender  mercy,  to  continue  respect 
for  the  profane  and  hateful  horrors  of  the  old  dog- 
ma of  infernal  means  to  divine  ends, — of  hell  an 
underlying  necessity  to  heaven.  It  comes  at  last 
to  be  understood  that  the  Sun  of  Righteousness 
indeed  has  healing  in  its  beams,  and  that  the  Infi- 


74  THE  QUESTION'  OF  HELL. 

nite  Holiness  shines  with  eqiial  grace  on  just  and 
unjust  alike. 

HEBREW    SCRIPTURE    AN    ETERNAL    EXTINCTION. 

The  dogma  of  qualified  orthodoxy  for  which 
Mr.  Constable  contends,  he  first  supports  by  an 
appeal  to  the  Jewish  Scriptures  concerning  the 
doctrine  of  which,  on  the  punishment  of  the 
wicked  and  the  particularities  of  eternal  dam- 
nation, he  remarks  as  follows  : 

"  We  need  go  no  further  in  order  to  ascertain  the  clear, 
distinct,  oft-repeated  testimony  of  the  Old  Testament.  By 
every  unambiguous  term  it  has  pointed  out  the  punishment 
of  the  wicked  as  consisting,  not  in  life,  but  in  the  loss  of  life, 
— not  in  their  continuance  in  that  organized  form  which  con- 
stitutes man,  but  in  its  dissolution,  its  resol'ition  Into  its 
original  parts,  its  becoming  as  though  it  had  never  been 
called  into  existence.  While  the  redeemed  are  to  know  a  life 
which  has  no  end,  the  lost  are  to  be  reduced  to  a  death  which 
knows  of  no  awakening  for  ever  and  ever.  Such  is  the  testi- 
mony of  the  Old  Testament." — p.  13. 

THE   FAITH    IS    ABOVE    HEBREW    SCRIPTURE. 

It  may  be  presumed,  in  view  of  this  statement, 
and  of  the  conflicting  orthodox  belief,  that  evident 
and  exact  doctrine  can  with  difficulty,  if  at  all,  be 
made  out  from  any  Hebrew  Scripture  references  to 
the  subject.  But,  be  this  as  it  may,  we  must  judge 
any  apparent  or  explicit  doctrine  by  its  relation  to 
faith.  If  it  helps  us  to  think  that  we  have  eternal 
life  ;  if  it  testifies  of  spirit  and  truth  made  evi- 
dent and  powerful  for  our  redemption  ;  if  it  is 


THE  QUESTION  OF  HELL.  75 

profitable  for  the  building  of  goodly  service,  and 
the  furnishing  of  godly  ministry  ;  if  by  it  are 
brought  the  deep  sanctities  of  Divine  righteous- 
ness, and  the  kingdom  of  peace  from  the  conflict 
with  evil,  then  may  we  know  it  as  divine  truth, 
and  ascribe  it,  but  not  the  earthen  vessel  which 
contains  itr,  to  the  Living  Word  and  Holy  Spirit 
of  God.  Mr.  Constable  appeals  to  Old  Testament 
word  merely  as  such,  and  with  very  plain  disregard 
of  the  analogy  of  our  faith.  In  this  he  builds  for 
the  fire,  not  for  a  refuge  of  the  believing  soul. 

HEBREW  TEACHING,  PURELY    HUMAN. 

It  is  astonishing  that  any  honest  student  in  our 
day,  knowing  the  facts  in  regard  to  the  Hebrew- 
Scriptures,  can  appeal  to  them  as  a  sacred  caaon, 
or  ever  use  so  much  as  a  single  text  from  them, 
except  on  the  simple  ground  of  its  evident  and  sep- 
arate truth.  Every  respectable  scholar  in  Christ- 
endom knows  that  it  is  Jewish  tradition  alone 
which  delivers  to  us  the  Hebrew  writings,  and  that 
this  tradition  is  conspicuously  human  and  fallible, 
from  its  origin  to  the  present  moment. 

CHRISTIAN    WITNESS    TO    ETERNAL    EXTINCTION. 

From  the  Christian  writings — including  the  New 
Testament— Mr.  Constable  draws  the  following 
testimony  : 


76  THE  Q  UESTION  OF  HELL. 

"And  what  did  the  Christian  preacher  declare,  and  tho 
Christian  writer  write,  to  that  world-wide  community  which 
was  ruled  and  bound  together,  not  merely  by  the  power  of 
Roman  will,  but  by  the  sceptre  of  the  Grecian  tongue  *  In 
Sermon  and  Disputation,  in  Gospel  and  History  and  Epistle 
and  Revelation,  the  propagators  of  the  new  religion,  asserted 
of  the  persons  of  the  wicked — i.  e.  of  souls  and  bodies  re- 
united at  the  resurrection — that  which  Plato  had  denied  could 
happen  to  any  soul.  ...  In  Jesus  Christ  was  that  '  life  ' 
•which  Plato  fancied  might  exist  in  the  soul  itself.  This  life 
lie  would  bestow  upon  his  people,  realizing  more  than  the 
conception  of  Plato.  But  away  from  Him  there  was  no  life. 
On  those  who  would  not  come  to  Him  for  life  there  would 
come  finally — after  stripes  few  or  many — the  end  pictured  for 
all  by  Epicurus.  The  Gospel  brought  together  the  fragments 
of  truth  scattered  throughout  human  systems.  Those  who 
would  soar  it  raises  to  God  ;  those  wno  would  revel  in  the 
sty  of  sensuality  it  sinks  to  the  level  of  the  beasts  that  per- 
ish."—pp.  20/21. 

NO    TKUTH    OF     CHRIST    IN    IT. 

The  Gospel  of  God's  sinking  of  souls  to  the 
level  of  the  beasts  that  perish  !  The  gospel  of 
compliance  with  the  sty  of  sensuality,  judicial 
complicity  with  degredation  !  The  Gospel  of  a 
divine  falling  back  from  Christ  to  Epicurus,  from 
life  and  immortality  disclosed  in  the  creature,  to 
extinction  inflicted  on  the  sinful !  It  is  truly  a 
piecemeal  construction  of  human  systems,  and  no 
revelation  of  faith.  Drawn  where  it  maybe,  there 
is  no  truth  of  Christ,  no  gospel  of  grace,  in  it. 
Is  Jesus  Christ^  a  bodily  enclosure  containing  all 
that  there  is  of  the  living  power  of  Godhead  ?  la 
he  not  rather  a  sacrament  of  infinite  grace,  a  sym- 


Tim  QUESTION  OF  HELL.  77 

bol  of  the  power  that  worketh  in  us  beyond  all  that 
we  can  ask  or  even  think  ? 

A    STINGY    AND    SHALLOW    CONCEPTION. 

Is  it  some  coming  in  a  formal  manner,  by  a  mo- 
tion of  assent,  or  desire,  without  which  no  energy 
of  divinity  will  so  much  as  stir  to  help  the  soul  of 
the  wanderer  ?  The  conception  is  as  stingy  in  di- 
vinity as  it  is  shallow  in  spirituality.  The  turning 
of  the  soul  to  Q-jd  is  no  formal  act,  which  now  one 
has  not  done  and  now  one  has  ;  it  is  a  life,  contin- 
uous as  being,  and  permanent  as  existence.  God 
does  not  keep  apart  in  a  place  for  us  to  look  him 
up  and  come  to  him  ;  The  Divine  nature  is  ever 
supernaturally  present  to  human,  in  an  order  and 
a  law  of  influence,  of  providence,  of  redemption. 
It  is  not  possible  to  make  any  terms  of  pure  faith 
speak,  as  Mr.  Constable's  statement  speaks,  of  the 
separation  of  man  from  Grod.  The  notion  is  not 
divinity  ;  it  is  stark  atheism. 

ANtJLING    WITH     HEATHEN     BAIT. 

As  for  souls  and  bodies  reunited  at  the  resur- 
rection and  committed  to  literal  destruction, 
with  various  degrees  of  torture^  the  prey  of  de- 
vouring hell,  one  must  angle  in  the  deep  waters  of 
gospel  teaching  with  heathen  bait  to  bring  out 
even  an  incidental  or  accidental  word  of  that  sort. 


78  I  HE  QUESTION  OF  HELL. 

Words  enough  there  may  be,  on  the  surface  of  tent 
and  record,  which  reflect  some  remaining  fragment 
of  the  great  shadow  of  darkness  which  the  pure 
gospel  broke  up  and  scattered,  but  no  eye  that  is 
single  and  full  of  light  can  possibly  read,  in  any 
part  of  the  substance  of  sincere  gospel,  any  such 
dogma  of  diabolism. 

LUGUBRIOUS    MYTHOLOGY. 

Mr.  Constable  does  in  fact  look  through  Hebrew 
and  heathen  mythology  to  discern  the  gospel,  as 
the  following  lugubrious  summary  of  angelic  and 
human  fortunes  sufficiently  indicates  : 

"Angels  fell.  No  saving  hand  was  stretched  from  the 
throne  to  raise  them  up.  .  .  .  Man  fell.  .  .  .  How 
many  left  behind  !  How  many  voices  silent !  How  many 
pulsations  of  life  stilled  forevermore !  " — p.  48. 

AN    ECHO    FROM    THE    FOOL'S    HEART. 

This  is  not  the  voice  of  Christ  ;  it  is  the  echo 
of  heathen  tradition.  The  whole  pernicious  tale 
of  war  in  heaven,  and  angels  cast  out  helpless  and 
homeless,  has  no  more  to  do  with  Christian  faith 
than  any  other  dark  figment  of  superstition. 
Equally  remote  from  gospel  verity  is  the  fable  of  a  • 
fall  of  the  race.  The  matter  could  have  no  sig- 
nificance if  we  were  able  to  arrive  at  some  sure 
knowledge  about  it  ;  the  gospel  does  not  under- 
take to  investigate  the  history  of  our  crippling, 


TILE  QUESTION  OF  HELL.  79 

but  to  summon  us  to  rise  and  walk  ;  and,  whether 
in  or  out  of  scripture,  speculation  about  the  fall  is 
quite  as  uncalled  for  as  anything  which  the  rec- 
ord represents  as  apostolic  blunder  and  folly; 
Peter's  dissimulation,  for  example,  or  the  carnal 
ambition  of  John  and  James.  As  for  that  actual 
failure  of  will  which  is  so  much  in  the  way  of  our 
living  to  God,  it  cannot  be  a  matter  in  which  we, 
or  any  other  moral  creatures,  are  left  without  help 
sufficient  for  our  whole  need.  To  say  "  no  saving 
hand  "  is  to  import  into  theology  what  the  psalm- 
ist says  that  the  fool  said  in  his  heart.  How  does 
the  gospel  perpetually  cry  unto  all  who  thus  doubt 
of  God,  "  0  ye  of  little  faith  !  " 

GOD'S    EXTINGUISHING    WRATH    ARGUED. 

Mr.  Constable  further  argues,  from  heathen  as- 
sumptions, the  wrath  of  God  in  the  extinction  of 
all  unbelievers,  in  the  following  extraordinary 
terms  : 

"  'But,'  it  might  be  suggested,  'at  least  we  shall  not,  if  we 
fall,  find  ourselves  ushered  into  a  doom  of  which  we  know 
little  beyond  what  some  faint  indistinct  fears  and  misgivings 
may  darkly  insinuate.'  Yet  even  such  God's  dealings  with 
our  race  show  us  may  be  the  case.  For  ages  He  left  the  gen- 
erations of  the  -world  to  themselves.  A  glimmering  tradition, 
a  darkened  conscience,  nature's  indications  of  a  Great  Being 
in  whom  love,  and  justice,  and  judgment,  and  power  had 
each  a  place  ;  these  were  all  myriads  had  to  guide  them  to 
the  brink  of  that  last  step  which  each  one  must  take  for 
himself,  and  by  himself,  into  the  dark  world  beyond.  We 
do  not  affirm  or  believe  of  the  heathen  that  all  are  lost ;  but 


80  THE  QUESTION  OF  HELL. 

we  do  know  from  Scripture  that,  a*  a  rule,  their  future  is 
without  hope.  Light  enough  to  condemn,  but  not  enough  to 
save.  Light  so  little  as  to  reduce  their  guilt  to  its  minimum, 
but  not  to  make  them  guiltless ;  and  yet  with  this  small 
amount  of  light  and  of  guilt  they  endure  the  second  and 
endless  death.  And  who  dares  say,  with  Christ's  words  in 
his  cars,  that  none  of  these  lost  ones  would  have  heard  and 
hailed  to  life  eternal  the  words  of  Christ's  Gospel,  if  they  had 
been  addressed  to  them  by  the  Master  or  by  his  disciples. 
From  Sodom  and  Gomorrha,  from  Tyre  and  Sidon,  He  tells 
us.  souls  would  have  sprung  forth  to  the  living  call  which 
was  heard  and  unheeded  by  the  callous  hearts  of  Chorazin 
and  Capernaum.  But  no  such  call  was  heard  amid  the  vice 
of  Sodom:  no  such  call  mingled  with  the  din  of  the  marin- 
ers of  Tyre,  or  with  the  beating  of  its  waves.  They  sinned  r 
without  law,  and  they  perish  without  law  ;  for  them  it  will 
be  more  tolerable  than  for  others  in  the  day  of  judgment, 
but  they  will  not  for  all  that  escape  its  endless  sen- 
tence."— p.  49. 

SODOM    AND    CHORAZIN    THEOLOGY. 

Perhaps  we  might  profitably  know  more  than 
we  do  about  Tyre  and  Sidon,  Sodom  and  Gomor- 
rha,  and  even  Chorazin  and  Capernaum  ;  or  else 
assume  that  we  know  nothing  about  them  with 
such  certainty  as  to  warrant  theological  inference. 
It  is  much  safer  to  argue  from  the  highest  view 
we  can  rise  to  of  the  character  of  God,  and  from 
those  undoubted  precepts  which  accord  with  this 
view.  The  Sodom  and  Chorazin  school  of  theolo- 
gy misapprehends  the  relative  value  of  obscure 
human  as  compared  with  evident  divine  facts.  It 
is  entirely  possible  that  the  story  of  the  former 
ought  to  stand  aside  for  the  revelation  of  the  lat- 
ter, and  that  if  we  searched  the  Scriptures  for  eter- 


THE  QUESTION  OF  HELL.  81 

nal  life  rather  than  for  odor  of  brimstone  it  would 
be  more  to  the  purpose  of  humble  service  to  God. 

WITH   GOD   IS   NO    DARKNESS    AT    ALL. 

Mr.  Constable  is  quite  sure  that  we  know  from 
Scripture  that  the  future  of  the  heathen  is  for  the 
most  part  without  hope  ;  he  does  not  doubt  that 
eternity  is  a  "  dark  world  beyond"  to  average  man ; 
and  his  eyes  discern  no  companion  for  the  human 
soul  on  the  way  into  that  gloomy  infinite.  So 
much  comes  of  not  having  an  eye  single  to  the 
revelation  of  faith,  which  casts  a  flood  of  light  on 
this  subject  by  simply  teaching  us  to  build  our 
lives  on  a  rule  of  absolute  love  to  all  souls,  and  our 
theology  on  absolute  confidence  in  the  perfect 
fatherhood  of  Deity. 

IS  THERE  A  LIMITED  SUPPLY  OF  GOD? 

That  God  emphatically  left  the  generations  of 
the  world  to  themselves,  with  but  a  darkened  con- 
science and  a  glimmering  tradition  by  which  to 
guide  themselves,  is  an  assertion  which  comes 
more  by  orthodox  reasoning  than  by  Christian  be- 
lieving. If  there  be  no  Godhead  other  than  that 
which  appears  in  the  Hebrew  and  Christian  writ- 
ings, and  no  care  of  mankind  other  than  that  con- 
nected with  these  writings,  it  is  quite  likely  that 
the  supply  of  spirit  and  life  to  the  creatures  has 
been  on  the  stingy  scale  suggested  by  Mr.  Consta- 


82  THE  Q  UESTION  OF  HELL. 

ble.  But  if  all  that  penmen  have  written  and 
prophets  said  be  but  an  earnest  of  the  infinite  Liv- 
ing Word  and  Holy  Spirit,  we  may  trust  that  God 
has  in  no  case  so  shabbily  neglected  his  offspring. 
Just  light  enough  not  to  help,  but  enough  to 
make  guilty,  were  incredibly  diabolical. 

ORTHODOX    INTIMACY    WITH    THE    ALMIGHTY. 

The  elaborate  acquaintance  of  orthodox  dogma- 
tists with  the  divine  theory  and  practice  of  law  is 
a  curious,  as  well  as  a  scandalous,  negation  of  that 
humility  before  God  which  is  the  Christian  basis 
of  theology.  Mr.  Constable  has  found  out  the 
mind  of  the  Lord,  ortherwise  than  by  simple  trust 
and  devotion,  and  he  speaks  for  God  as  follows  : 

"We  are  satisfied  that  the  divine  jurisprudence  regards 
the  welfare  of  the  great  numbers  as  its  paramount  con- 
sideration. "We  see  the  important  bearing  of  future  punish- 
ment as  it  is  revealed  in  Scripture,  severe  but  never  unjust, 
on  this  widely  stretching  interest  of  unbounded  space,  of  eter- 
nal duration.  We  see  how  every  shade  of  severity  tells  on 
some  vast  destiny  of  the  future,  from  the  severity  which  pun- 
ishes where  t lie  hands  had  been  vainly  stretched  out  all  the 
day  long,  and  the  pleading  voice  had  been  mocked  at,  to  the 
severity  which  punishes  where  no  clear  voice  had  ever  spok- 
en, and  where,  if  such  a  voice  had  spoken,  it  would  have 
been  heard." — p.  50. 

SOULS  BURNED  UP  TO  MAKE  AN  EXAMPLE. 

If  this  be  true,  that  God  sacrifices  individuals  to 
the  mass,  and  even  does  not  mind  visiting  with 
doom  some  who  would  have  escaped  if  they  had 
clearly  understood  the  way  and  the  necessity,  what 


THE  q  UESTION  OF  HELL.  83 

further  is  needed  to  vindicate  the  atrocious  doings 
of  the  persecutor?  The  practice  in  the  one  case 
would  be  no  different  from  that  in  the  other. 
Jesuit  and  Jehovah  alike  make  necessary  examples 
for  the  large  benefit  of  the  great  number.  It 
may  seem  very  hard  on  those  who  suffer  at  the 
stake,  and  on  those  who  are  burned  up  in  hell  ; 
but  then  it  is  useful  !  The  breadth  of  this  use, 
according  to  Mr.  Constable's  imagination,  is  the 
grand  point.  But  for  diffusing  through  the  uni- 
verse the  impression  of  one  spectacle  of  souls  re- 
duced to  cinders  for  not  doing,  or  for  not  knowing, 
the  divine  will,  Mr.  Constable  thinks  things  might 
have  gone  very  differently.  Thus  he  says  : 

"  We  are  by  no  means  prepared  to  say  that  if  fallen  man, 
aye,  and  even  fallen  angels,  had  alone  been  in  question,  their 
treatment  by  God  might  not  have  been  widely  different.  Had 
they  alone  been  in  question  we  dare  not  confine  the  efforts  at 
their  recovery  to  those  which  have  been  actually  made. 
Christ  might  in  that  case  have  taken  hold  of  angels,  instead 
of  putting  forth  redemption  only  for  the  sons  of  Abraham. 
Man's  day  of  grace  might  not  in  that  case  have  been  con- 
fined to  his  life  here  from  the  cradle  to  the  grave,  but  grace 
might  have  followed  him  on  from  age  to  age,  and  world  to 
world  ere  it  ceased  to  strive  to  win  back  those  who  had  once 
offered  to  God  the  pure  incense  of  ~\  creature's  praise,  who 
had  onco  felt  the  ennobling  emotion  of  the  heart's  love  and 
worship  of  God." 

ALMOST    PERSUADED    TO    TRUST    GOD. 

Evidently,  simple  faith  came  near  making  Mr. 
Constable  a  Christian  thinker  on  this  subject.  How 
nearly  he  comes  to  feeling  constrained  to  have  con- 


84  1HE  QUESTION  OF  HELL. 

fidence  in  the  universal  and  eternal  urgency  of  the 
Divine  Love  !  If  he  had  been,  in  the  humility  of 
total  ignorance,  prepared  to  say  nothing  at  all 
about  the  universe  outside  of  man,  and  had  leaned 
to  humane  rather  than  heathen  justice,  and  to 
'God  is  Love'  rather  than  to  'Behold  Chorazin  and 
Sodom"  what  might  not  have  been  his  hope  that 
God  would  not  confine  his  efforts,  at  future  recov- 
ery of  the  lost,  to  doing  nothing  at  all ! 

THE     PURE      HEART      AND     SINGLE      EYE,     WHICH 
TRULY     SEE    GOD. 

It  may  be  assumed  that  an  eye  single  to  the 
service  of  God, — not  engaged  with  distant  and  dis- 
tracting speculation,  and  not  perplexed  with  anx- 
iety to  assist  the  Almighty  to  maintain  the  digni- 
ties of  universal  dominion,  but  rather  bent  in  pure 
desire,  and  holy  purpose,  and  fervent  prayer,  upon 
the  simple  duties  of  a  humble  walk  and  conversa- 
tion, justice,  charity  and  humility,  would  have 
disclosed  to  Mr.  Constable  the  descent  of  the  , 
Divine  Word  to  every  lowest  depth  of  creature 
existence,  and  redemption  put  forth,  without  re- 
spect of  persons,  on  a  scale  worthy  for  breadth, 
and  a  scheme  worthy  for  sufficiency  and  effectual 
perfectness,  of  the  alone  supreme  and  blessed  God. 
It  is  not  given  to  dogmatists,  full  of  heady  opinion, 
to  gain  the  vision  of  peace,  in  which  mortal  nature 


THE  QUESTION  OF  HELL.  85 

reads  immortal  fate,  and  the  troubled  clod  becomes 
instinct  with  the  hope  of  eternal  good  ;  but  to  sim- 
ple faith,  studying  quietness  at  the  feet  of  Divine 
Love,  it  is  given  to  have  prophetic  expectations  of 
grace  following  the  creature  with  the  persistency 
and  the  power  of  eternity,  not  lasting  beyond  fit 
persuasion,  but  not  resting,  forever,  until  the  word 
of  the  Lord  accomplish  that  whereto  it  was  sent, 
and  the  creature's  praise  put  a  crown  upon  the 
Creator's  perfection. 

GOD'S  CARE  FOB  INDIVIDUALS  DENIED. 

The  particular  discovery,  upon  which  Mr.  Con- 
stable has  emphatically  rested  his  denial  of  abso- 
lute redemption  in  the  universe,  he  states  in  the 
following  confident  terms  : 

11  Mere  individual  life  is  not  precious  in  God's  si<jM.  If  he 
scatters  it  with  a  prodigal  hand,  lie  removes  it  with  a  hand 
that  is  just  as  free.  In  the  myriads  of  human  beings  reduced 
in  hell  to  death,  in  the  extinction  of  the  fallen  angels,  we  do 
but  find  a  particular  application  of  a  universal  law.  Lower 
creatures  know  not  God,  and  fade  away  out  of  life.  Higher 
intelligences  knew  Him,  turned  from  Him,  made  them- 
selves like  the  beasts,  and  like  beasts  are  treated.  Hell  will 
add  its  fossil  remains  to  those  of  the  quarries  of  the  earth." — 
p.  39. 

SPIRIT  TO  SPIRIT,  NOT  DUST  TO  DUST. 

What  does  the  author  of  this  argument  "know  of 
the  disposition  which  universal  law  makes  of  the 
living  part  of  the  lower  creatures  ?  And  how  does 
he  know,  supposing  that  the  very  life  of  these  crca- 


86  THE  QUESTION  OF  HELL. 

tures  is  extinguished,  that  man  was  not  made  at  a 
higher  level  of  destiny  ?  Fossil  remains  are  of  the 
form  only,  not  of  spirit  and  life.  The  only  correct 
comparison  would  be  to  say  that  earth  adds  her 
mummies  and  her  urns  of  human  dust  to  t  he  fossil 
remains  of  lower  creatures.  If  these  creatures  had 
had  souls,  and  their  souls  had  been  damned  all  to 
cinders  for  not  knowing  and  serving  God,  the  fact 
would  afford  analogical  proof  that  God  may  not 
hesitate  to  inflict  perdition  on  human  souls,  alien- 
ated through  ignorance  from  his  life,  and  sunk  into 
profound  degradation.  But  as  the  question  is  of 
the  fate  of  spirit  and  life  in  man,  of  the  extinction 
of  divinity  in  the  nature  of  the  creature,  it  will 
hardly  answer  to  argue  from  "the  beasts  that  per- 
ish." It  is  not  true  that  moral  beings  "  make 
themselves  like  the  beasts"  by  not  knowing  and 
serving  God  ;  it  is  in  a  figurative  sense  only  that 
degradation  brings  down  man  to  the  level  of  the 
beast ;  his  spirit  remains,  if  he  be  indeed  born  in 
a  higher  image,  and  we  are  bound  to  find  a  destiny 
for  that  according  to  laws  of  spirit  and  life,  not  ac- 
cording to  the  law  of  "  earth  to  earth  and  dust  to 
'dust." 

MAN  CANNOT  EXPEL  GOD. 

I 

And  this  brings  up  the  point  to  which  the  argu- 
ment for  damnation   always  retreats,  that  of  the 


THE  QUESTION  OF  HELL.  87 

supposed  power  of  man  to  expel  good  from  the 
very  constitution  of  his  being  and  to  adopt  evil  in 
its  ijlace.  Mr.  Constable  says:  "  The  free  creature 
can  defeat  Divine  goodness  for  itself.  .  .  The  sinner 
has,  no  doubt,  defeated  God's  goodness  for  him- 
self;" and  consistently  with  this  he  speaks  of  God's 
"utter  failure  to  save  in  unnumbered  instances." 
(p.  52).  But  this  is  directly  contrary  to  faith. 
It  is  absolute  doubt  of  God.  It  is  faithless  unbe- 
lief, no  matter  how  we  may  justify  it. 

THE   DOGMATIC    LAST    DITCH. 

The  assertion  of  free  will,  or  the  explanation  of 
it,  is  of  no  account  whatever  in  comparison  with 
loyalty  to  the  highest  and  purest  conception  of 
God  which  has  been  revealed  to  us.  If  we  cannot 
reconcile  free  will  and  efficient  fatherhood,  we  can 
postpone  the  former  matter  until  by  obedience  we 
come  to  more  adequate  comprehension.  But  we 
can  reconcile  it  if  we  choose  ;  it  is  in  dogmatic 
stubbornness  only  that  sensible  men  refuse  to  as- 
sume that  efficient  fatherhood  in  God  is  as  simple 
and  natural  as  it  is  on  earth,  and  as  much  surer 
as  divine  wisdom  and  power  exceed  human.  There 
is  a  criminal  perversity  in  standing  desperately  in 
this  last  ditch,  with  the  absurd  claim  that  man  is 
more  than  a  match  for  God  in  the  matter  of  moral, 
discipline. 


88  THE  QUESTION  OF  HELL. 

MOKK    ARGUMENT    FOE    HELL. 

It  is  time  to  gather  into  a  single  quotation 
what  remain  of  our  selected  pertinent  sentences 
from  Mr.  Constable's  peculiar  argument  for  hell. 
They  are  as  follows : 

"'Better  not  to  be  than  to  live  in  misery,'  was  the  judg- 
ment of  Sophocles,  and  we  ever  find  the  wretched,  when  suf- 
fering has  become  excessive,  calling  upon  death  as  a  friend. 
So  the  close  of  each  agonized  life  in  hell  would  be  longed  for 
here  ;  would  send  a  thrill  of  relief  through  the  inhabitants  of 
heaven."  p.  3. 

"Their fire  is  not  quenched.  It  preys  upon  them  with  relent- 
less force.  No  cries  of  the.  damned  arrest  it;  no  prayers  as- 
cend from  the  redeemed  for  the  sin.  which  they  know  to  be 
eternal  death  :  no  feelings  of  pity  in  God's  bosom  interfere 
to  check  its  course.  It  burns  on,  consuming,  preying,  re- 
ducing, until  it  has  consumed  and  burnt  all.  When  it  has 
spent  its  force  it  dies  out  for  want  of  food,  leaving  behind  it 
the  endless  sign  of  destruction  which  it  has  brought  on  fall- 
en archangel,  and  angel,  and  man.  This  is  the  second  death. 
But  we  can  bear  to  look  upon  it  because  it  is  death.  We  are 
not  looking  upon  a  picture  which  would  overturn  reason  and 
banish  peace  from  all  who  beheld  it.  Life  has  left  the 
realms  of  the  lost.  The  reprobate  felt,  but  do  not  continue 
to  feel  the  consuming  flames.  These  prey  upon  the  dead  un- 
til dust  and  ashes  cover  the  floor  of  the  furnace  of  hell."- 
p.  34. 

' '  To  some  this  death  may  be  an  instantaneous  process,  a  mo- 
mentary transition  from  one  state  to  another,  like  the  infant 
w  ho  opens  his  eyes  on  this  world  and  then  closes  them  for  evei . 
Here  may  be  the  amount  of  conscious  pain  for  the  myriads 
upon  myriads  of  young  and  old  who,  in  heathen,  and  even 
in  Christian  countries,  from  the  inevitable  moral  darkness 
with  which  their  circumstances  had  surrounded  them,  scarce 
knew  wrong  from  right.  To  others  the  process  of  the  second 
death  may  be  more  or  less  lengthened  until  we  arrive  at  the 
case  of  the  greatest  human  offenders,  or  that  more  aggra- 
vated one  of  the  spirits  who  fell  from  Heaven  and  drew 
weaker  man  along  with  them  in  their  fall.  In  our  theory 
we  see  how  it  may  be,  as  it  certainly  will  be,  more  tolerable 
for  some  than  for  others  in  the  day  of  judgment ;  how 


THE  QUESTION  OF  HELL.  89 

while  stripes  many  and  sore  fall  on  some,  on  others  they 
may  fall  so  few  and  so  light  as  scarcely  to  be  felt  at  all." — 
p.  37 

"  OofPs  ?F7y.9  with  the  sinner  are  equal.  They  are  severe,  but 
they  are  just.  They  are  full  of  awe,  but  they  can  be  con- 
templated with  calmness.  They  show  the  award  of  a  jus- 
tice in  whose  consequences  we  can  rejoice.  Their  issue  in 
eternal  death,  if  it  brings  the  sight  of  sadness,  brings  also  the 
deep  full  breathing  of  infinite  relief.  We  require  ndtlier  the 
'  pnrgatory  '  of  Augustine  nor  the  '  universal  restoration  '  of 
Origen.  Looking  on  the  calmed  face  of  death,  we  will  say, 
'it  is  well.'  The  woes,  the  agony,  the  despair  of  life  are 
passed  away  from  its  features  with  the  sin  that  produced 
them." — p.  43. 

"He  will  indeed  gather  into  it  all  things  that  offend — all 
the  foul  rakings  of  hate,  and  pride  and  falsehood,  and  selfish- 
ness, and  lust.  But  it  is  with  the  ominous  purpose  of  Jehu, 
when  he  said, '  Gather  all  the  prophets  of  Baal,  and  all  his 
priests;  let  none  be  wanting,'  and  'the  house  of  Baal  was 
full  from  one  end  to  another.'  So  will  hell  enlarge  her 
borders,  and  the  evil  of  the  universe  shall  descend  into  it,  and 
fill  its  wide  domain,  to  be  extirpated  and  blotted  out  for 
ever."— p.  66. 

"According  to  their  deserving  is  their  chastisement.  The 
time  for  each  one's  suffering  over,  he  is  wrapped  in  the  slum- 
ber of  eternal  death.  Gradually  life  dies  out  in  that  fearful 
prison  until  unbroken  silence  reigns  throughout  it.  They 
who  would  not  find  life  have  found  death.  But  the  scene 
remains  for  ever.  As  Sodom  and  Gomorrha  have  exhibited  to 
every  succeeding  generation  of  men  the  Divine  vengeance 
upon  full-blown  iniquity,  so  will  the  charred  and  burnt-out 
furnace  of  hell  afford  its  eternal  lesson  to  the  intelligences  of 
the  future.  As  angels  wing  their  way  from  world  to  world, 
as  the  redeemed  touch  with  fresh  delight  their  harps  of  gold, 
as  new  orders  of  spiritual  life  are  called  into  being,  so  the 
nature  and  end  of  sin  are  always  remembered  in  that  scene 
where  so  many  of  the  inhabitants  of  heaven  and  earth  had 
bid  an  eternal  farewell  to  the  life  of  God  which  is  so  full  of 
joy.  That  lesson  of  awe  is  read  and  pondered  on  by  all. 
But  it  wilt  be  a  lesson  read  without  the  shudder  of  anguish. 
They  have  drunk  the  waters  of  Lethe,  'the  silent  stream,' 
and  forgotten  long  ago  their  miser}-.  There  is  no  eternal 
antagonism  of  good  and  evil,  no  eternal  jarring  of  the  notes 
of  praise  and  wailing  ;  evil  has  died  out,  and  with  it  sorrow ; 


90  I  HE  QUESTION  OF  HELL. 

throughout  God's  world  of  life  all  is  joy,  and  peace,   and 
love." — p.  67. 

THE  ONLY  REAL  END  OF  EVIL. 

Mr.  Constable's  idea  of  the  death  of  sorrow  and 
the  end  of  evil  is  the  selfish  and  sensual  one,  not 
the  spiritual  and  Christian  one.  It  is  in  the  frui- 
tion of  love,  the  success  of  good,  the  completion  of 
every  pure  purpose,  that  Christian  faith  teaches 
us  to  look  for  final  blessedness,  while  vulgar  dog- 
ma, following  the  pattern  of  heathenism,  only  asks 
for  the  removal  of  anything  painful  to  saintly  sen- 
sibilities. On  Mr.  Constable's  theory  a  mother 
may  twang  her  golden  harp  with  ever  fresh  de- 
light after  her  offspring  are  entirely  burned  up,  and 
when  she  sees  nothing  but  the  cinders  of  them  on 
the  floor  of  the  furnace  of  hell.  In  Christ,  on  the 
contrary,  there  availeth  nothing  for  her  celestial 
bliss  but  the  fulfilment  at  last  of  her  maternal 
love,  through  the  infinite  succor  of  the  Divine  Or- 
der, no  covenant  of  which  can  ever  pass  away. 

HELL  THE  FAILURE  OF  MORAL  RULE. 

There  is  no  possible  manner  in  w-hich  eternal 
memory  of  the  nature  and  end  of  sin,  as  portrayed 
by  Mr.  Constable's  theory,  could  be  other  than  a 
shadow  of  irremediable  horror  to  beings  decently 
sensitive  to  the  distinction  between  good  and  evil. 
The  "charred  and  burnt-out  furnace  of  hell" 


THE  Q  UESTION  OF  HELL.  91 

could  only  bear  eternal  witness  to  imbecile  moral 
sway  in  the  universe,  however  much  it  might  tes- 
tify of  physical  omnipotence  and  the  crude  ven- 
geance of  merely  formal  law.  Happily  it  is  a  piti- 
ful and  beggarly  evidence  on  which  Mr.  Consta- 
ble's cheerful  hell  is  promised.  If  the  everlasting 
Sodom  is  as  hard  to  find,  and  as  easy  to  explain 
away,  as  the  legendary  cities  of  the  plain,  to  which 
Mr.  Constable  makes  absurd  appeal,  the  scene  of 
ashes  and  cinders  will  prove  no  more  than  the  pic- 
ture in  a  forgotten  story. 

DIABOLIC     DIVINITY. 

It  is  a  singular  circumstance  that  a  nominal 
Christian  should  suppose  himself  writing  respecta- 
ble divinity,  when  he  makes  "  the  ominous  pur- 
pose of  Jehu,"  a  vulgar  and  bloody  wretch  in  He- 
brew story,  a  type  of  the  dealings  of  the  Divine 
Father  with  his  children,  and  represents  the  Di- 
vine Order,  not  as  remedying  whatever  may  go 
wrong,  but  as  gathering  into  everlasting  smash 
and  conflagration  a  large  part  of  the  creation.  Such 
a  diviner  may  not  require  either  the  purgatory  of 
Augustine  or  the  universal  restoration  of  Origen, 
but  he  does  require  to  understand  the  first  princi- 
ples of  the  Christian  religion,  the  sure  order  of 
effectual  fatherhood  in  God,  and  the  perpetuity 
forever  of  fraternal  covenant  between  the  children 


92  THE  QUES1ION  OF  HELL. 

of  God.  It  certainly  ought  not  to  be  difficult  for 
a  sane  mind,  decently  awake  to  evident  considera- 
tions of  human  feeling,  to  see  the  lunatic  character 
of  a  proposal  which  should  make  a  mother,  we  will 
say,  call  upon  one  or  two  children  in  this  fashion  : 
"  Let  us  be  happy  now  with  our  harps  in  the  par- 
lor ;  Tom,  and  Jennie  and  Dick  are  all  burned  up 
in  the  sitting-room,  and  father  is  a  heap  of  ashes 
in  the  woodshed."  Yet  with  such  infernal  toot 
does  Mr.  Constable  propose  to  sound  the  Harvest 
Home  of  heaven  ! 

THE    MASSACRE    OF    INNOCENTS. 

The  nice  appointment  of  preliminary  torture 
promised  by  Mr.  Constable's  theory  might  have  a 
fascination  for  a  Turkish  executioner,  used  to  pull- 
ing off  thumb  nails,  gouging  out  eyeballs,  pulling 
joints  apart,  and  otherwise  contriving  the  utmost 
agonies  of  slow  death.  One  thing,  however,  would 
puzzle  the  interested  Turkish  observer  of  Mr. 
Constable's  scheme,  and  that  is  the  indiscriminate 
slaughter  of  myriads  upon  myriads  of  moral  in- 
fants, persons  born  and  bred  under  unhappy  cir- 
cumstances, who  barely  gasp  with  a  first  breath  of 
moral  life  before  they  find  themselves  about  to  be 
murdered  and  thrown  into  the  fire.  There  has 
never  been  on  earth  any  monster  so  brutal  in  pas- 
sion, so  degraded  in  character,  as  to  be  fully  ready 


THE  QUESTION  Of  HELL.  93 

to  sympathize  with  such  wholesale  slaughter  of 
moral  innocents.  Can  it  be  that  the  naked  atrocity 
of  inflicting  eternal  capital  punishment  on  "  the 
myriads  upon  myriads  of  young  and  old  who,  in 
heathen,  and  even  in  Christian  countries,  from  the 
inevitable  moral  darkness  with  which  their  circum- 
stances had  surrounded  them,  scarce  knew  wrong 
from  right,"  should  not  be  perfectly  evident  to 
every  thoughtful  person  ?  That  it  is  not  is  dis- 
tressing proof  how  little  cunent  dogma  has  to  do 
with  real  thinking,  or  with  any  proper  activity  of 
moral  feeling. 

THE    QUESTION    OF    QUESTIONS. 

To  conclude  this  discussion,  we  will  IOOK  for  a 
moment  at  the  way  in  which  Mr.  Constable  is 
compelled  to  dispose  of  the  great  doctrine  of  hu- 
man immortality.  His  recognition  of  the  preval- 
ence and  power  of  this  doctrine  is  in  the  following 
terms  : 

"Neither  a  future  life,  nor  judgment  and  punishment  to 
come,  were  ideas  novel  to  man.  Heathen  poetry  and  prose 
perpetually  discussed  them  before  the  preaching  of  the  Gos- 
pel.''-^. 14 

"  Before  the  preaching  of  the  Gospel  the  highest  order  of 
heathen  philosophy  had  framed  for  its  satisfaction  a  theory 
of  the  immortality  of  the  soul.  While  far  the  greater  num- 
ber taught  that  death  was  for  all,  sooner  or  later,  an  eternal 
sleep,  there  were  '  high  spirits  of  old'  that  strained  their  eyes 
to  see  beyond  the  clouds  of  time  the  dawning  of  immortality. 
They  framed  the  idea  of  an  immortality  self-existing  in  the 
soul  itself.  Plato,  in  his  '  Phaedo,'  has  given  us  the  marvel- 


94  THE  QUESTION  OF  HELL. 

ous  reasoning  of  Socrates,  and  Cicero  has  exhibited  the  ar- 
gument in  his  'Tusculan  Questions.'  According  to  it,  the 
soul  Is  possessed  of  an  inherent  immortality.  It  is  of  neces^ 
sity  eternal.  It  could  have  no  end  :  no  death.  What  was 
true  of  one  soul  was  true  of  all  souls  alike,  whether  good  or 
bad.  They  must  live  somewhere,  be  it  in  Tartarus,  Cocytus, 
Piriphlegthon,  or  the  happy  abodes  of  the  purified.  This 
sublime  philosophical  idea  passed  readily  and  early  into  the 
theology  of  the  Christian  Church.  We  find  it  running 
throughout  the  reasoning  of  Athenagoras  and  Tertullian,  of 
Origen  and  Augustine," — p.  4. 

"The  immortality  of  the  soul  was  not  a  question  for  Jew 
ish  and  Christian  thought  alone  ;  it  was  the  question  of 
questions  for  the  universal  human  mind.  In  particular,  it 
•was  the  question  of  questions  in  the  various  schools  of  Gre- 
cian Philosophy.  One  of  the  noblest  specimens  of  human 
reasoning,  building  its  lofty  superstructure  on  uncertain  da- 
ta, that  has  ever  charmed,  exalted,  and,  for  our  part,  we 
must  add,  bewildered  the  human  intellect,  is  found  in  the 
dying  discourse  of  Socrates  to  his  frieLds,  handed  down  to  a 
deathless  fame  in  the  '  Pha?do  '  of  Plato.  Its  object  was  to 
prove  the  immortality  of  the  soul — that  it  could  never  cease 
to  be — that  through  whatever  changes  it  might  pass,  whatever 
pollutions  it  might  suffer,  whatever  fearful  torments  it  might 
endure,  there  was  the  deathless  principle  of  the  human  soul 
which  asserted  an  eternal  life  and  utterly  refused  to  die.  It 
could  never  be,  according  to  Plato,  a  thing  of  yesterday,  an 
existence  of  the  past  but  not  of  the  present,  a  figure  once 
jotted  down  in  the  book  of  life  and  then  blotted  out  of  it  for 
ever.  In  what  terms  is  the  denial  of  its  mortality  conveyed  ? 
In  the  very  terms  in  which  the  punishment  of  the  wicked  is 
asserted  in  the  New  Testament.  Where  the  latter  says  the 
soul  shall  die,  Plato  says  it  shall  not  die;  where  the  latter 
says  it  shall  be  destroyed,  Plato  says  it  shall  not  be  destroyed; 
where  the  latter  says  it  shall  perish  and  suffer  corruption, 
Plato  says  it  shall  not  perish  and  is  incorruptible.  The 
phrases  are  the  very  same,  only  that  what  Plato  denies  of  all 
souls  alike,  the  New  Testament  asserts  of  some  of  the  souls 
of  men.  But  the  discussion  of  the  question  was  not  confined 
to  the  school  of  Plato  or  to  his  times.  Every  school  of  phi- 
losophy took  it  up,  whether  to  confirm  Plato's  view,  or  to 
deny  it,  or  to  heap  ridicule  upon  it.  All  the  phrases  we 
have  been  discussing  from  the  New  Testament  had  been  ex- 
plained, turned  over  and  over,  handled  with  all  the  power 


'I HE  QUESTION  Of  HELL.  95 

of  the  masters  of  language*  presented  in  every  phase,  so 
that  of  their  sense  there  ooald  be  no  doubt,  nor  could  there 
be  any  one  ignorant  of  their  sense  before  Jesus  spoke,  or 
;in  Evangelist  or  Apostle  wrote.  The  subject  had  not  died 
out  before  the  days  of  Christ.  It  never  could  and  never  will 
die  out.  In  every  city  of  the  Roman  world  were  schools  of 
Grecian  thought  in  the  days  of  the  Apostles.  In  every 
school  the  question  before  us  was  discussed  in  the  phrases 
and  language  of  the  New  Testament." — p.  19. 

IMMORTALITY     "  A    MERE'  FANCY." 

Statements  such  as  these  are  calculated  to  ex- 
cite reflection.  There  is  no  denial  that  the  ques- 
tion is  of  supreme  significance  to  the  universal  hu- 
man mind,  nor  that  the  answer  of  Plato  is  one  of 
the  nohlest  conceptions  that  ever  came  to  the  heart 
of  man.  It  is  the  marvellous  reasoning,  thedeath- 
lessly  famous  discourse  of  Socrates,  and  the  sub- 
lime philosophical  idea  which  readily  passed  into 
Christian  theology,  which  Mr.  Constable  proposes 
to  brush  aside  to  suit  his  theory  of  hell.  He  pro- 
ceeds to  the  business  in  the  following  fashion  : 

"  The  expression  '  immortality  of  the  soul,'  so  common  in 
theology,  is  not  once  found  in  the  Bible  from  beginning  to 
end.  In  vain  do  men,  bent  on  sustaining  a  human  figment, 
ransack  Scripture  for  some  expressions  which  may  be  tor- 
tured into  giving  it  some  apparent  countenance." — p.  6. 

"  At  an  early  period,  however,  doctrine  on  this  point  be- 
gan to  be  corrupted,  and  the  corruption  grew  with  a  rapid 
growth.  Of  all  the  systems  of  philosophy  in  vogue  at  the 
time,  the  most  sublime  was  that  of  Plato.  Of  a  part  of  hu- 
man nature,  the  soul,  it  took  a  very  lofty  and  captivating 
view.  It  abandoned  the  body  willingly  and  forever  to  its 
dust,  but  it  ascribed  to  the  soul  a  life  which  should  have  no 
end. 


90  TIIE  QUESTION  OF  HELL. 

The  reader  of  Scripture  knows  how  earnestly  and  fre- 
quently Paul  warned  the  Church  against  philosophy.  He  is 
the  only  one  of  the  Apostles  who  has  especially  done  so,  as 
he  was  probably  the  only  one  of  them  who  had  any  ac- 
quaintance with  philosophical  systems.  In  his  warnings  he 
does  not  make  any  exception.  He  does  not  condemn  the 
Stoic  or  Epicurean  schools,  and  exempt  that  of  Plato,  as 
some  of  the  Fathers  expressly  affirm  of  him.  He  prohibits 
with  all  the  weight  of  his  authority  the  introduction  of  any 
philosophical  system  or  dogma  into  the  Church.  He  warned 
that  it  would  spoil  and  corrupt,  not  elevate  or  strengthen 
truth. 

Many  of  the  early  Fathers  forgot  this  warning  of  the  Apos- 
tle, and  it  is  among  these  precisely  that  we  find  the  origin  of 
error  in  the  Christian  Church  upon  the  great  doctrine  of  fu- 
ture punishment.  Educated  in  Plutonism,  they  did  not  like 
to  renounce  it,  and  flattered  themselves  that  they  might,  with 
great  advantage  to  the  cause  of  Christianity,  bring  at  least  a 
portion  of  their  old  learning  into  its  service.  Some  brought 
less,  some  more,  according  as  they  were  more  or  less  thor- 
oughly acquainted  with  Christianity.  But  on  one  poi:,t  they 
were  substantially  agreed.  All  of  them,  with  Tertullian, 
adopted  in  the  sense  of  Plato  Plato's  sentiment — 'Every  soul  is 
immortal.'  On  this  point  Plato  took  rank,  not  among  prophets 
and  apostles,  but  above  all  prophets  and  apostles.  A  doctrine 
which  neither  Old  Testament  nor  New  taught  directly  or  in- 
directly, nay,  which  was  contrary  to  a  great  part  of  the  teach- 
ing of  both,  tnese  Fathers  brought  in  with  them  into  the 
Church,  and  thus  gave  to  the  old  Sage  of  the  Academy  a 
greater  authority  and  a  wider  influence  by  far  than  he  had 
ever  attained  or  over  dreamed  of  attaining.  It  was  in  effect 
Plato  teaching  in  the  Church,  under  the  supposed  authority 
of  Christ  and  his  Apostles,  doctrine  subversive  of,  and  con- 
trary to,  the  doctrine  which  they  had  one  and  all  maintained. 
This  dogma  of  Plato  was  made  the  rigid  rule  for  the  inter- 
pretation of  Scripture.  No  Scripture,  no  matter  what  its 
language,  could  be  interpreted  in  a  sense  inconsistent  with 
Plato's  theory.  Christ,  and  Paul,  and  John,  all  were  forced 
to  Platonise.  The  deduction  of  reason,  half  doubted  by 
Plato  himself,  was  by  these  Platonising  Fathers  palmed  off 
on  men's  minds  as  the  teaching  of  revelation." — p.  55. 

"Connect  the  immortality  of  the  soul  with  the  Scriptural 
doctrine  of  the  eternity  of  punishment,  and  you  inevitably 
create  the  dogma  of  eternal  life  in  misery,  i.  e.  of  Augustine's 


THE  QUESTION  OF  HELL.  97 

hell.  Connect  it  with  the  other  great  truth  of  Scripture,  the  final 
extinction  of  evil  and  restoration  of  aU  things,  and  you  as  in- 
evitably create  Origerfs  Universal  Restoration.  For  each  of  these 
opposing  theories  there  is  exactly  the  same  amount  of  proof, 
viz :  Plato's  dogma  and  a  dogma  of  the  Bible  ;  and,  if  Plato's 
dogma  could  be  proved  to  be  a  Scriptural  doctrine,  then  by 
every  law  of  logic  Scripture  would  be  found  supporting  two 
distinct  and  absolutely  contradictory  theories. 

"Accordingly,  this,  philosophical  idea  of  Plato  is  found  per- 
vading and  influencing  the  interpretation  of  Scripture  from 
the  second  century  down  to  our  own  day." 

In  a  subsequent  chapter  we  will  show  the  actual  influ- 
ence of  this  dogma  upon  the  doctrine  of  the  Church  leading 
first  to  Augustine's  fearf'il  theory  of  everlasting  misery,  and 
then,  in  the  revulsion  of  human  thought  from  this,  to  Ori- 
gen's  theory  of  universal  restoration.  We  here  merely  note 
t'io  f  set  that  the  dogma  of  the  inalienable  immortality  of  the 
human  BOU!  was  from  a  very  early  period  of  the  Christian 
Church  accepted  generally  as  true. 

No'.v  the  immortality  of  the  soul,  whether  as  held  by  Plato, 
by  O'.-i«ren,  or  by  the  Fathers  in  general,  was  a  mere  fancy  of 
the  hut&an  mind." — p.  5. 

THE    FOOL'S    DENIAL. 

The  energy  and  audacity  of  this  denial  are 
worthy  of  a  better  cause.  '  A  mere  fancy  of  the 
human  mind/  says  Mr.  Constable,  of  a  belief 
which  ranks  in  significance  with  belief  in  the  ex- 
istence of  God.  If  our  thought  of  the  dignity  of 
the  soul  can  be  summarily  snuffed  out  in  this  fash- 
ion of  rude  unbelief,  the  way  is  wide  open  to  the 
feet  of  whoever  may  choose  to  say  unblushingly 
that  there  is  no  God.  It  is  by  the  suicide  of  rea- 
son that  we  take  such  a  step  as  Mr.  Constable  is 
tempted  to  by  a  dogmatic  necessity.  Mr.  Con- 
stable terribly  errs  from  a  wise  method  of  con  vie- 


98  THE  QUESTION  OF  HELL. 

tion   in   supposing   that   he  justly   degrades    the 
thought  of  immortality  by  calling  it  "  the  human 
dogma  of  the  immortality  of  the  soul,"  or  "the 
dogma  of  Plato,  creation  of  human  reason,  tradi- 
tion of  men."     If  the  idea  were  from  unregenerate 
and  heathen  man,  as  the  false  and  degrading  theo- 
ry of  hell  is,  there  would  bo  justice  in  stigmatizing 
it.     Mr.  Constable's  dogma  of  hell  is  evidently  of 
the  earth  earthy,  and  of  the  pit  infernal,  but  the 
idea  of  immortality,  born  of  the  higher  reason  and 
purer  imagination  of  man,  soars  above  the   deceits 
of  fear  and  the  uncertainties  of  passion,   equally 
with   the   thought   of    God.      It   is    an    upward 
thought,  and  cannot  ba  made   to  givo  way  to  tho 
base  conception  of  a  nature  in  man  no  better  than 
that  of  the  beasts  that  perish,  or  are  supposed  to 
perish.     If  Mr.  Constable  chooses  to  browbeat  hu- 
man faith  in  the  manner  of  scoffing  scepticism,  on 
any  point  of  its  ideal  anticipations,  he  should  be 
consistent,    and  deny    at    once    both    the    exist- 
ence of  God  and  the  life  of  God  in  the  soul  of 
man.     To  sniff  at  the  latter  as  a  mere  fancy  of  the 
human  mind,  is  no  better  than  to  dismiss  the  for- 
mer with  cheerful  contempt.     In  the  one  case  as 
in  the  other,  the  method  is  that  of  naked  and 
abominable  unbelief,  as  repugnant  to  the  Chris- 
tian consciousness  as  it  is  subversive  of  Christian 
divinity. 


Q  UESTION  OF  HELL. 


THE    BCRIPTUKES     SEARCHED     FOR    SUGGESTIONS    OF 
HELL. 

The  point  of  relation  to  scripture  teaching  from 
which  Mr.  Constable  takes  leave  of  the  two  sub- 
liraest  truths  of  religion,  the  immortality  of  the 
soul,  and  the  universal  restoration  of  all  to  good, 
sufficiently  indicates  the  heathen,  character  of  his 
method.  Instead  of  fastening  on  such  a  thought 
as  that  of  the  final  extinction  of  evil  and  restora- 
tion of  all  things,  and  working  it  out  to  its  deep- 
est moral  application,  the  restoration  of  good  in 
all  souls,  hj  attaches  himself  most  closely  to  the 
notion  of  eternity  of  punishment,  and  bands 
everything  to  the  preservation  of  this  scripture  pit- 
hole,  as  if  the  chief  desire  of  his  heart  were  to 
sniff  the  smoke  of  the  torment  of  the  damned.  It 
doss  not  seem  to  occur  to  him  that  the  doubtful 
scrip  ture  suggestions  of  hell  may  be  to  Christian 
truth  pure  and  simple  as  the  old  dispensation  to 
the  new,  not  meant  for  everlasting  remembrance, 
but  only  for  terror  to  men  of  hard  hearts  and  per- 
verse and  froward  minds  ;  or  that  in  any  one  of  a 
dozen  other  ways  an  enlightened  faith  may  learn 
to  rise  above  this  bog  of  perplexities,  the  crude 
doctrine  of  hell.  He  considers  the  logic  of  texts 
the  rule  of  faith,  when  none  has  bsen  proved  more 


100  THE  QUESTION  OF  HELL. 

unfruitful  and  untrustworthy,  except  for  delusion, 
distraction,  and  deceit. 

PHILOSOPHY    MADE    AWAY    WITH. 

It  may  well  be  considered  necessary  to  make 
away  with  philosophy  altogether,  not  merely  with 
that  falsely  so  called,  but  with  every  fruit  of  rea- 
son and  product  of  understanding,  to  make  it  at 
all  sure  that  Christianity  will  not  unfold  a  clear 
doctrine  of  the  life  of  God  in  the  soul  of  man,  an 
eternal  and  universal  gift  from  the  Creator  to  his 
moral  creatures.  But  Mr.  Constable's  warning  is 
twenty-five  hundred  years  too  late  to  take  effect. 
He  should  have  been  on  hand  with  his  small  cord 
of  concern  for  damnation  to  strangle  Socrates  in 
his  cradle,  and  to  watch  with  every  generation 
against  the  birth  of  sages  and  saints,  to  whose  il- 
lustrious faith  has  been  due  so  grand  a  career  of 
the  expectation  that  man  shall  not  prove  dust  to 
dust  alone,  or  cinders  to  cinders,  but  spirit  of 
Spirit,  life  of  Life,  while  eternal  ages  roll. 

CHRIST    AND    ETERNAL    LIFE. 

The  proposal  to  regard  eternal  life  as  "given 
only  through  Christ,"  proceeds  upon  a  totally  false 
conception  of  Christ,  if  it  is  made  to  mean  that  wo 
are  mortal  in  soul  as  well  as  body  until  we,  by  an 
act  of  our  own,  enter  into  a  formal  relation  to 


THE  QUESTION  OF  HELL.  101 

pick  themselves  up  by  faith,  but  that,  by  the  Rea- 
son and  Spirit  of  the  Divine  Father,  we  have 
Jesus,  and  that  only  those  who  thus  enter 
into  this  relation,  become  capable  of  immor- 
tality. The  theory  is  confused  and  absurd  too 
to  start  with.  It  really  should  mean  that  we  are 
mere  animals,  without  a  spiritual  part,  until  we 
earn  this,  or  secure  this  by  the  act  of  faith  in 
Christ ;  but  it  actually  does  mean  that  the  Crea- 
tor reserves  the  paternal  right  to  kill  off  all  who 
do  not  get  an  insurance  from  Christ.  In  one  as- 
pect the  doctrine  seems  to  be  that  we  are  not  en- 
dowed with  immortality  until  we  get  it  from  Je- 
sus ;  while  in  the  other  it  is  that  we  have  no 
right  to  expect  to  keep  our  immortality  unless  we 
put  it  under  the  protection  of  Christ.  The  error 
either  way  is  in  assuming  that  man  has  no  saving 
relation  to  the  Reason  and  Spirit  of  God,  apart 
from  some  earthly  manifestation  of  that  relation. 
The  handling  of  the  whole  matter  of  the  revelation 
of  God  to  man  has  been  so  bunglingly  carnal  that 
average  divinity  does  habitually  assume  that  re- 
demption is  a  matter  of  our  individual  relation  to 
an  historical  Christ,  much  as  if  a  crop  of  apples 
were  expected  to  grow  by  dead  germs  picking 
themselves  up  from  the  ground  and  attaching 
themselves  properly  to  the  living  tree.  But  this 
is  not  of  Christian  faith.  The  truth  in  Christ  is 


102  THE  QUESTION  OF  HELL. 

not  that  the  blossoms  all  fell  off  in  Adam,  and 
living  and  saving  connection  with  Infinite  Being 
and  Eternal  Life,  and  cannot  escape  the  develop- 
ment, discipline,  and  destiny  of  living  souls.  We 
are  in  Christ  whether  or  no,  in  the  divine  sense, 
and  only  in  the  human  sense  are  out  of  Christ, 
until  providence  and  spirit  persuade  and  guide  us 
to  faith  and  fidelity. 

THE    REFINER'S   FIRE. 

The  question  of  hell  settles  itself  the  moment 
we  appreciate  our  subjection  to  the  moral  order  of 
the  universe,  and  the  end  of  that  order  to  bring  us 
unto  a  perfect  man.  Then  we  comprehend  that 
there  is  no  other  hell  than  the  furnace  of  discipline; 
that  from  that  torment  no  wrong-doer  can  possibly 
escape;  but  that  out  of  it  every  moral  creature 
will  come  a  son  of  God  without  spot  or  stain, — AN- 

NOINTED  OF    GrOD-WITH-US. 


I 


OESB' 


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